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My recent article about the art of the Amazon is on the importance of agency and representation at the Venice Biennale, aka the Olympics of the art world. (Full article linked in stories) 🦜🦥🇵🇪🇪🇨
“Venice is sinking. The Amazon is burning. Both are casualties of the same socio-political cycle of domination and extraction. In contrast, the art of the Amazon river basin currently on view in Venice at the Ecuadorian and Peruvian pavilions speak about reciprocity, deep ecology, and the persistence of non-Western knowledge systems despite years of resource extraction.
🦥Amazonian cosmologies, though diverse, are rooted in a belief in the fundamental interconnectedness of life, a relational vision that contests the economic drive to exploit resources and turn the sacred into a commodity. The art market risks repeating this very logic: rather than celebrate higher prices for the art of the Amazon, we need to question the extractive habits of the art world and its penchant for ‘discovering’ undervalued art, because this a language of discovery sounds colonial by insinuating that these artists and traditions did not exist until the market’s gaze fell upon them…” (Images: Tawna Collective and Sara Flores)

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Peru’s pavilion at this year’s @labiennale features Sara Flores (age 75), an artist from the Shipibo-Konibo community whose rise within the international art world has been rapid. Before she entered the upper echelons of the art world, she was selling Shipibo-Konibo textiles and crafts in local markets and traveling between communities to make ends meet. Now she represented by White Cube Gallery and her work is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum, the Guggenheim, Tate London, the Hammer Museum, etc. Her practice centres on kené, a geometric, relational design system passed down through Shipibo-Konibo women that has been described as a form of transmitting ancestral knowledge through rhythm and repetition. In a recent New York Times interview co-curator of the Peruvian pavilion Matteo Norzi said “Historically there was a barrier like a form of apartheid: Indigenous people were placed in natural history museums, and white artists in the fine art museum. But now that’s changing.” @matteonorzi @sarafloresvalera

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Huge congrats to Ecuadorian artist @pamecevalloss for being among the 50 artists included in “I Follow Rivers: Indigenous Worlds in Latin America” opening this fall @denverartmuseum curated by Raphael Fonseca. I am a huge fan, and I recently placed several of her works in the collection of some of my favorite clients. (Slide three is now in my collection!) Cevallos has an interdisciplinary, research-based practice that critiques museums and the art world as intrinsically colonial institutions. She examines how cultural artifacts in institutional collections are acquired, classified, and stripped of their original meaning. Slide one is a sketch I photographed during a recent studio visit- I love seeing her process first hand. It shows the level of research and care that goes into her work. Looking forward to sharing a project we have been working on soon. #latinamericanart

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We have an amazing lineup of programs and events in store this summer!

6.13: "A Living Vision: The Sorolla Gallery at 100" Curator Talk
6.24: Panel Discussion on "Sandy Rodriguez: Tierra Insurgente"
6.25: "Gay Liberation: New York City Pride Parades 1975-1976" Book Presentation
6.27: World Cup Celebration
6.27: ¡Wepa! Summer Salsa Socials at the Hispanic Society

RSVP at link in bio

Images 3-5: @alfonfon_lozano

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Textiles have been used as a means of communication for centuries; the word “text” comes from the Latin textus, meaning “woven.” Covering us from birth to death, textiles have conveyed symbolic, political, and spiritual messages across cultures from the Incan empire to Gee Bends quilters. As evident in the multi dimensional work of Miami’s Fiber-based women artists, textiles intrinsically conveys both ideas of care and nurturing, as well as resistance and critical inquiry. Textiles made by women complicate the rigid, colonial division between “fine art” and “craft.” They refuse to be quiet in the traditionally male-dominated space of art history, where textiles have been gendered as women’s work and deemed less serious. The work of the incredible women featured in this essay (link in stories) is a testament to sustainability, communal care, and play. While digital screens and speed continue to dominate modern life, their textile art is earthy, tactile, and made at a slower pace. In an era of devastating ecological change, their fiber-based art is a powerful and healing tool for transformation, communication, hope and joy. #textile #fiberart #womenartists

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Join us tomorrow 4/25 (1-4pm) for a gallery crawl and informal lecture on the state of the current art market and the upcoming Venice Biennale! DM for more info…

“Veronica is onto something here: She brings a wealth of intellectual and emotional connection to works of art, of course, but something else--a tribe that's woven together throughout the day by her force of personality. The whole experience is a chance to fall back in love with this city and the best of its energies. “ Chris Lawrence 📌🍍killer cover graphics by @torithelopez

#miamiart #allartnopretense

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It’s really hard to choose 20 images from an art-filled week in NYC going to museums, gallery visits and taking in my old hometown in its Springtime glory. I ❤️🗽 and needed an injection of it’s contagious energy. #allartnopretense #diamundialdelarte #worldartday @intiprojects

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I am so excited to tour @moadmdc this Saturday on our art hang (DM for more info and to RSVP) especially since Chief Curator Amy Galpin will be sharing her insights on the multiple amazing exhibitions at the Freedom Tower with our group. It is a real treat to see the work of Cuban artist Belkis Ayón (1967–1999) who created her own visual universe in response to extremely difficult circumstances. To be a woman artist and educator during the repressive “periodo especial” in Cuba, an economic crisis that was brought on by the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, meant scant art supplies and opportunities. Much like the current crisis the period was marked by energy shortages, food scarcity and collective distress. As a working artist and art teacher Ayón had limited supplies, in fact when she travelled overseas (aside from Havana she also showed in New York, Berlin, New Delhi, and Lima) she often brought materials back for her students. Despite these obstacles, the prints she made- large scale monochromatic collographs (a process where materials are glued to something like cardboard) depicting the mythical Afro-Cuban princess Sikán - a feminist icon for the ages- are pure magic. In this magical show Belkis’s art is in conversation with another Cuban artist, Carlos Alfonzo. As Galpin explained:
“I thought it would be interesting to pair them together and maybe surprise people a bit…I hope that when people come to the show, if they’re skeptical, they might be surprised by the connections that they see in their work.” Join us Saturday as we begin our gallery crawl at this iconic Miami institution!

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#internationalwomensday should be every day! All women are natural born creators, sometimes it looks like making a floral 🌸arrangement, mending an old shirt, or cooking 🥘 a hearty soup. Others are working artists, writers, poets or caretakers. I am forever inspired by the women artists I get to write about, befriend, study or teach. Whatever fuels your soul- keep making it! 🙌🏽”Tell us what the world has been to you in the dark places and in the light. Don’t tell us what to believe, what to fear. Show us belief’s wide skirt and the stitch that unravels fear’s caul.” #tonimorrison #womensupportingwomen #womenartists #allartnopretense

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Comrade Frida as depicted by Diego Rivera in a mural at his Anahuacalli Museum in Coyocán is emblematic of her leftist political agenda. Frida, a member of the Mexican Communist Party who consistently supported revolutionary movements was a staunch critic of capitalism. After a short stint living in the US, which she nicknamed “Gringolandia,”she routinely spoke the“decay” of American consumerism. So leave it to Miami to bring the commodification of her image to new heights. If you keeps scrolling you will see the soon-to-be built Frida Kahlo residencies in the rampantly gentrified Wynwood neighborhood of Miami. (Swipe LEFT!)
🇲🇽At the aforementioned CDMX museum really enjoyed the epic intervention/temporary exhibition by @elrafaesparza and @beatrizcortezflores which, in keeping with Rivera’s ethos, critiqued extractive museum acquisitions, while exploring issues of land, ancestral memory, and queer identity
❤️Also in carousel pics of my cute cousin and niece Ana on our lively visit to this iconic Mexico cuty museum. What are your thoughts on this travesty! LMK in comments…
PS in anther ironic turn Kahlo, the anti-capitalist, is on top of the art market because of the record-breaking 2025 $55 million sale of “El Sueño.”

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Huge CONGRATS to @kelly_chuning on her solo exhibition opening in Dallas, TX next week! A recent transplant to Miami, Tapia-Chuning has become a friend of Art Hang and its founder- me! Tapia- Chuning (b. 1997, California) is a mixed Xicana artist with Indígena ancestry. Her brilliant work has been on my radar for some time, and her relocation to FL is such a win for our local community. According to @glasstire her solo show “In Speaking Ancestors / [Re]Awakening Spirit” and her textile and research-based practice in general, “critically examines ‘mestizaje’-the blending of cultures-and histories of assimilation. Through deconstructing and reconfiguring the iconic Mexican blanket, the serape, her work seeks to heal ancestral trauma and reconnect with long-forgotten familial
histories and cultural roots.”

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“The art world has always been about prices,”says the University of Chicago professor of economics David Galenson, echoing a commonly repeated phrase. But according to an essay for the arts organisation e-flux by Andrea Fraser, an artist and professor at the University of California Los Angeles, the “emergence of art as a financial asset” in the early 2000s split the market into its own autonomous subfield within the art world. One consequence is that the market increasingly embraces the language and fast-tracked expectations of the financial industry.”
(From Art News) see link in bio and stay tuned for more on this in my substack!
Pics from my undergrad Art History days at S.M.U. and grad school @uchicago

➡️The targeting of the Smithsonian and the brutal cuts in arts funding and censorship by this administration severely limits artists and scholars, thus dumbing down the collective. And sadly, that’s the goal. More than ever it’s time to support our institutions, artists and writers. And Miami has a plethora!
🖼️🎨Museums and galleries are one of the last intentional and ritualized ways to consume images, it’s the antithesis of the proliferation of short, vapid videos that we are force fed via IG reels, facebook and tik tok ad nauseum.📲
As a former recipient of a full schoarship to study art history by one of the institutions mentioned here -University of Chicago- the news of the pause in graduate art history admissions is hitting hard. We must do better.

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