Activity at the major fairs was bolstered by adjacent performances, installations, and strong institutional and gallery exhibitions. Es Devlin’s soaring public installation, ‘Library of Us’ — a 50-foot rotating bookshelf on Faena Beach filled with 2,500 books that have shaped her life and work. Curated by Jasmine Wahi, Pakistani artist Hiba Schahbaz’s retrospective ‘The Garden’ at MOCA North Miami explores the Persian quadrilateral garden known as a char-bagh as a central theme.
In a solo exhibition titled ‘Who by Fire’ at Mindy Solomon Gallery, Zoë Buckman’s mixed media textile portraits present a personal exploration of her own identity, while confronting themes of antisemitism, misogyny, and racism. At Espacio 23 —a contemporary art space in Little Haiti— the group exhibition ‘A World Far Away, Nearby and Invisible’ is curated by Claudia Segura Campins, Patricia M. Hanna, and Anelys Alvarez. It presents a reimagining of the complex, multifaceted idea of territory, organized into four chapters.
And at Opera Gallery in the Design District, the exhibition ‘In Dialogue with Colour: Mid 20th Century to Now’ uses the board theme of color — something inherent to art week at large —to explore individual colour’s potential as a powerful language existing outside of form and meaning. Below is The COLD Magazine’s visual diary documenting our favourites from Miami Art Week 2025.
Frank Stella piece at Opera Gallery’s exhibition ‘In Dialogue with Colour: Mid 20th Century to Now’ in Miami Design DistrictEs Devlin’s public installation ‘Library of Us’,a 50-foot rotating bookshelf at Faena in Miami Beach. The triangular ‘library’ is filled with 2,500 books that have shaped Devlin’s life and work.Mounted in partnership with the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, this Sol Lewitt sculpture, titled ‘Tower (Frankfurt)’from 1990, has been humbly mounted here on NE 38th street since 2017. It’s refreshing to revisit a modest totem like this. It seems to sit in contrast to the core tenet of pursuing newness, which sweeps across the magic city during each art week. ‘The Garden’ at MOCA North Miami is Hiba Schahbaz’s first major museum exhibition, bringing together paintings, miniatures, and immersive installations that draw on Persian and Mughal Garden traditions to explore femininity, mythology, and transformation. At the opening, a performance unfolded as a living extension of the exhibition, underscoring some of the key themes of identity, passage, and embodied storytelling.‘Folie à deux’, a 2025 oil painting by Matthew Hansel at Rodolphe Janssen’s booth at Art Basel.Zoë Buckman with her 2025 multimedia piece, ‘Trace Your Ridges’ at Mindy Solomon Gallery. Drawing its title from Leonard Cohen’s evocative adaptation of a Yom Kippur prayer, the show meditates on home, vulnerability, and collective endurance.A bold, satirical painting by the late American artist Robert Colescott, ‘Miss Black Oakland’ at Gladstone Gallery. (P.S. on the occasion of the artist’s centennial year, the Tacoma Art Museum in Washington opened a survey of Colescott’s work, surveying his singular visual take on race, beauty, and American culture.José Eduardo Yaque, ‘Cancrinita III’ (2018) on view at El Espacio 23’s exhibition ‘A World Far Away, Nearby, and Invisible: Territory Narratives.’ The show features works from the Jorge M. Pérez Collection.Yann Gerstberger, ‘From Spirits to Spirits’ (2017). Made from pastel, oil, and chalk on wood and comprised of six parts. Another painting on view at El Espacio 23’s exhibition ‘A World Far Away, Nearby, and Invisible: Territory Narratives.’Shana and Dan Benchetrit, founders of DASHA, with some of their crystalline resin objects. The duo uses crystalline resin to create these “lucky charm” — talismans of sorts that speak to the universal need for protection and positivity across cultures. In a time that can feel so rife with bad news and tragedy, there’s something really cathartic about these pieces.
