Antonia Wright + Ruben Millares
Yes/No, 2021 - various corners in Downtown Coral Gables
Lighting sponsors: Day One Lighting
Project Description
At this historic moment where our country has erupted protesting racial injustice, the image of the barricade has become ubiquitous on our streets. Previously an innocuous symbol demarcating “no access,” barricades were mainly associated with providing safety and crowd control at celebratory events like parades, or creating a queue for sporting and music events. In the current political environment in the U.S. where the right to a peaceful protest is being threatened, we believe a metal barrier conjures anxiety and is used as architecture to separate and control bodies in public space.
Using barricades as a symbol of our global climate of resistance, we offer our new work, a site-specific sculptural light installation entitled Yes/No. By lighting the barricades being used by the Illuminate exhibition throughout Coral Gables, we aim to highlight the ubiquitous nature of these objects and their ambiguous intent to protect and control. By transforming a utilitarian object into a light work, the glowing objects will create a line throughout the streets of the city, evoking the divide and connection between our bodies.
Antonia Wright
With a poetic sensibility and profound attention to aesthetic detail, I respond to the violent realities seen through the mediated image by putting my own body through extreme, sometimes aggressive and logistically dangerous gestures as a visceral sublimation. My interest in using the body as a principal tool enables me to undermine the boundaries of politics, to challenge social conventions, and to test the endurance of viewers. By questioning social norms through physical actions I set up dichotomies; violence and humor, fear and formal beauty — that ultimately achieve a fusion of ecstasy and anxiety.
My background in video, photography and poetry informs my approach to these performative actions. The pieces, each different in process and method, are a result of long-term research. The works range from performing tai chi while covered with 15,000 bees, throwing my body through panes of glass, rolling naked down alleys, crying in public streets, and falling through ice on a frozen lake.
Recently my projects have taken the form of sculpture, using objects as a surrogate for my body to develop a physical connection with the viewer. The piece, Yes/No is a sculpture in which the body is substituted with the ubiquitous police barricade.
In addition to my own practice, I actively participate in collaborations with other artists. Ruben Millares and I debuted It is not down on any map; true places never are, a large kinetic outdoor sculpture with UNTITELD, ART Fair during Miami Art Week 2019. The international artist collective Plastico Fantastico, which I am a founding member, won a Florida state grant in 2019 and will be doing a residency with ArtSail in 2020.
My art practice is inextricably linked to my social practice. I have been working with the Lotus House homeless shelter for woman and children for almost 10 years. In 2012, I became and founded the first artist in residence program. I lived at the shelter for one month, made art with the guests, which is permanently on view in the new Lotus village. I also serve on the board of Planned Parenthood North, South, and East Florida and Locust Projects.
Imbuing my work with a performative quality of the bodily, I aim to restore a sense of urgency and elicit emotion and concern for the other.
Antonia Wright is a Cuban-American artist born in 1979 in Miami, Florida. Wright received her MFA in Poetry from The New School in New York City as well as at the International Center of Photography for photo and video. She has exhibited in the U.S. and abroad and has participated in artist’s residencies both nationally and internationally. Exhibitions include shows at The Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., The Perez Art Museum Miami, Pioneer Works in New York, The Faena Arts Center in Buenos Aires, The Margulies Collection at the Warehouse, Vizcaya Museum and Gardens, Spinello Projects in Miami, FL, Luis de Jesus Gallery in Los Angeles, Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art in Arizona, The National Gallery of Art in Nassau, and Ping Pong in Basel, Switzerland. In April 2012, she became and founded the first artist-in-residence at the Lotus House Shelter in Overtown, Miami. She recently won a 2019-2020 South Florida Cultural Consortium Award and was a CINTAS Foundation Fellowship finalist awarded to artists with Cuban heritage. She is represented by Spinello Projects in Miami, FL and affiliated with Luis De Jesus Gallery Los Angeles. Wright’s work has been presented in publications including The New York Times, Artforum’s Critics’ Picks, Art In America, Hyperallergic, i-D, New York Magazine, Daily News, Miami Herald, El Nuevo Herald, and The Art Newspaper.
Education
International Center of Photography (ICP), New York, NY, 2008.
The New School, New York, NY, 2005.
Masters in Fine Arts, Creative Writing, Poetry. Thesis: Poetry and Performance Art
University of Montana, Missoula, MT, 2002.
Bachelor of Arts, English. Emphasis Creative Writing and Literature
Solo Exhibitions
Selected Group Exhibitions
Awards/ Commissions/ Residencies
Selected Bibliography
Ruben Millares
Ruben Millares was born in Miami, Florida in 1980. As a visual artist he is medium agnostic as he attempts to define balance as a concept. Through the use of sculpture, drawing, performance, installation, print‐making, painting, music and video he is able to capture the essence of an idea without limitation. For Millares time, more than an inspiration, is a powerful raw material. As an artist with a formal educational training as a Certified Public Accountant and Financial Planner, as well as in art and music, Millares is in a constant search for the fusion between practicality and imagination. Informed by two opposite worlds, his work gives an impression of great poetry with a serious yet playful airiness.
Recent and upcoming exhibitions include solo shows at Untitled Art Fair/Art Basel, Pan American Art Projects, Volta NY, National Art Gallery of the Bahamas, Art & Culture Center of Hollywood, The Central Bank of the Bahamas and Spinello Projects. Group shows include Pan American Art Projects, Ping Pong Art Basel Switzerland, The Tampa Museum of Art, Spinello Projects, Philadelphia City Hall, White Box Gallery, Hillside House Gallery Nassau, Fountain Art Fair New York, The Invisible Dog Art Space Brooklyn and Crane Art Space Philadelphia. Millares’ video/performance piece with collaborator Antonia Wright, Job Creation in a Bad Economy, was featured in the 2011‐2012 exhibition at the Margulies Collection at the Warehouse. His work is included in the permanent collections of Martin Z. Margulies at the Warehouse, Dennis and Debra Scholl Collection, Hadley Martin Fisher Collection, The Bass Museum of Art and the Robert Borlenghi Collection.
Millares has been presented in articles in the Miami Herald, Miami New Times, St. Petersburg Times and El Nuevo Herald among others and featured in the ArtNewspaper’s Basel edition on Miami artists. He has also participated in prestigious artist residencies including Pioneer Works, Red Hook, NY and Elsewhere, Greensboro, NC.