Faena Festival

Faena Art presents the second annual Faena Festival The Last Supper, an exploration of spirituality and food, abundance and sacrifice, indulgence and abstinence, and archetypal symbolism and contemporary aesthetics.

Curated by Zoe Lukov, Chief Curator at Faena Art, the Festival takes the pulpit and the kitchen as its point of departure, invites us to break bread together, and posits the shared meal or prayer as the crux of social interaction and communal connectivity. The works in the Festival are dialectical: simultaneously sacred and profane, object-based and immersive, imbued with tradition and contemporary expressions of spiritual practices. The works establish a multiplicity of viewpoints surrounding our ceremonial rituals and objects, and their broader roles within cultural imaginings and narratives from around the world. The experiential presentation and curatorial format will occupy and engage with the entire Faena District.

Alan Faena stated, “I created the Festival to be an incubator for new talents and ideas that inspire me, a space for connectivity, and to support artists to realize their dream projects, push limits and blur boundaries across artistic disciplines, and ultimately to generate new dialogues, narratives, and experiences.”

The Last Supper will include new commissions by Sophia Al-Maria, Gabriel Chaile, Myrlande Constant, Emeka Ogboh, Osías Yanov with Lulo Demarco and Jamilah Sabur; installations by Camille Henrot, Zhang Huan, and The Propeller Group; an LED billboard boat on the waterways of Miami, which will serve as a platform for mobile video installations by Janine Antoni, Jillian Mayer and Ana Mendieta; a Cinema Series with nightly screenings by Yael Bartana, Andrea Büttner, Christian Jankowski, Jumana Manna, Pedro Neves Marques, Grethell Rasúa, Faith Ringgold, Martha Rosler and Antonia Wright; and a Supper Series, featuring culinary activations and shared meals by Jim Denevan, Lunafridge, Francis Mallmann and Paul Qui, among others. All programs will be free and open to the public.

“Art and spirituality have been linked forever—objects have always been made with intention, imbued with symbolism, and have acquired power and capital from the significance applied to them. Feasting and fasting, traditions that we have developed around shared meals and shared spiritual experiences, are often the bedrock of our lives, from the wafer and wine that were the body and the blood, to the ‘bread and circuses’ that marked imperial decadence, to the sanctity of one’s right to a last meal, or the offerings we leave our ancestors. We have often turned to spirituality or food for solace and healing, and this Festival wants us to catch the spirit,” said Lukov.

Grand Opening: Monday, December 2
6pm: Welcome cocktail and remarks, Faena Forum, 3300 Collins Avenue Miami Beach, FL 33140 
7pm: Unmasking of Zhang Huan’s Miami Buddha at Faena Beach 
8pm: Open Air Cinema at Faena Beach 

Free and open to the public. More info

About Faena Art
Faena Art is a nonprofit organization that houses and produces post-disciplinary and time-based experiences. A catalyst for innovative, site-specific, and immersive creative practices, Faena Art is a transformative bridge across the Americas, between the south and the north, the popular and the experimental, activism and research. Faena Art fosters new models for performative social interaction that transcend the traditional boundaries of art, science, philosophy, and social practice.