Monday, November 28 – Sunday, December 4, 2022

—Work to be Acquired by City of Miami Beach to go on Permanent View at the Miami Beach Convention Center —

Miami Beach, FL — The City of Miami Beach is pleased to announce that Juana Valdés, represented by Spinello Projects, Miami, has been selected as its 2022 Legacy Purchase Program acquisition. The annual program tasks the city’s Art in Public Places Committee to select three world-class pieces of artwork from the emerging artists of the Art Basel Miami Beach Positions and Nova Sections with an $80,000 budget. Valdés was among three finalists selected by the city’s Art in Public Places Committee alongside Elizabeth Atterbury (presented by DOCUMENT, Chicago) and Ana Prata (presented by Isla Flotante, Buenos Aires).

In her work, Colored Bone China Rags, Valdés examines Afro-Cuban migration through the lens of material culture and personal experience. The artist links bodies to the physical constitution of bone china clay and its extraction and displacement as raw material, commodity, and commercial goods presented through an installation of 12, earth-toned rags cast in porcelain and mounted horizontally across a wall.

Born in Pinar del Rio, Cuba, Valdes came to the United States in 1971. She received her BFA in sculpture from the Parsons School of Design (1991), her MFA in fine arts from the School of Visual Arts (1993), and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture (1995). She is an associate professor in the Art Department at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Recent solo exhibitions include Terrestrial Bodies, Cuban Legacy Gallery, Miami Dade College Special Collections, Freedom Tower (2019-2020); An Inherent View of the World, Mindy Solomon Gallery, Miami (2017); From Island to Ocean: Caribbean and Pacific Dialogues, Center for Cultural Analysis, Rutgers University, NJ (2015), and Remnants-What Remains, Thomas Hunter Project Space, Hunter College, CUNY (2014).

Her work has also been included in group exhibitions in such museums and university galleries such as: Site Santa Fe, Perez Art Museum, El Museo del Barrio, NYC; P.S. 1 MOMA, NYC; MOCA, North Miami;  Galerie Verein Berliner Künstler, Berlin; the Mason Gross Galleries at Rutgers University, New Jersey; Newark Museum, New Jersey; Galerie Binnen, Amsterdam and FreeSpace, Sydney.

About the Legacy Purchase Program:

The Legacy Purchase Program began in 2019, acquiring world-class art pieces for the city’s public collection and growing in value as artists further their professional careers. Previous acquisitions include works from Sanford Biggers, Amoako Boafo, Ebony G. Patterson and Farah Al Qasimi. The Legacy Purchase Program is made possible from the Miami Beach Art in Public Places Program. This fund is dedicated to the purchase of public art that includes the purchase and future maintenance of the artwork. All acquisitions fall under the city’s AiPP ordinance and guidelines.

About the City of Miami Beach Art in Public Places Program
Art in Public Places is a city board responsible for the commission and purchase of artwork by contemporary artists in all media. The program allocates funds totaling 2% of hard costs for city projects and joint private/public projects. Funds from construction projects may be aggregated into the Art in Public Places Fund and allocated for artwork at public sites and for collection maintenance. The fund is administered by a City Commission-appointed citizen’s board of seven members, the Art in Public Places Committee.

Media Contact

For additional information, images, and interview requests please contact:

Ben Demars
Blue Medium
E: Ben@bluemedium.com
T: +1 (212) 675-1800