This is Not America, Faena Festival

Conceived by Alan Faena, the inaugural Faena festival will run from December 3 through 9, 2018, during the Art Basel Miami week. This is Not America will be this year's theme, enduring the Miami role as a hemispheric hub and port that welcomes migrants, refugees, and tourists from across the US and the Americas, and from countries throughout the world. Organized by Faena Art curator Zoe Lukov, the Festival is anchored by the groundbreaking work by Alfredo Jaar, A Logo for America, and features major new commissions of installations and performances by Derrick Adams, Cecilia Bengolea, Isabel Margarita Lewis, Luna Paiva, Tavares Strachan, and Wu Tsang + boychild, among others, installed throughout Faena District Miami Beach, including the public areas of the street, sidewalk and beach. Jaar's prescient 1987 work A Logo for America will be a point of departure for the exploration of America as a place, concept and myth—more relevant now than ever with the U.S. placing its lowest ceiling since 1980 on the number of refugees that can be resettled here. The work will be presented on an LED jumbotron mounted on a boat navigating the Miami Beach shoreline each day throughout the Festival. The monumental, text-and-and-image-based animated work, originally commissioned by The Public Art Fund for the giant electronic billboard marking the heart of New York's Times Square, features the text "This is Not America" emblazoned across an outline map of the US that morphs into an outline of the entire western hemisphere from a variety of perspectives, including from South to North, challenging the traditional view of the North at the top of the map.