After more than six years and just twenty-six shows at The Wynwood Building in Wynwood Art District, artmedia GALLERY re-opens its doors at a new venue with the presentation of Waking up in Miami. Five Photographers on the Road. At the gallery, we are excited to inaugurate this new space and begin another cycle of exhibitions with our first group show of artists who have exhibited individually in our previous location.

As the title of the exhibit indicates, Miami is the big stage where these photographers have conducted their artistic explorations. All of them are distant from the stereotypical perception of Miami as a magical and paradisiacal city that functions as a shopping center and an oceanfront resort. They are also far from the labels conferred to Miami as a big inter-American business hub, the capital of the Americas or many others closer to the marketing than to the personal, cultural, or political concerns expressed by the locals.

Five medium format images of interior spaces organized in a polyptych structure, the contribution of G. A. Jakubovics to the exhibition, alludes to the difficulties in pursuing in Miami the goal expressed in Seeking a Code, 2014-2017, the series to which they belong. The Jorge Sánchez’s polyptych included in the show is a part of 6.9 or Less, a body of photographs taken in the area of Opa Locka, between 2011 and 2014, in which the author raises issues on the socio-cultural implications of the warehouse as a building model that predominates in this black and Hispanic neighborhood. On the other hand, two images of the Mitya Trotsky's project Today is the Day, completed in 2015, synthesize the interest demonstrated in it by the artist in reflecting on the cultural meaning of the business fever of demolition and construction in Miami, and its consequences in the context of the imaginaries about and the recent history of the county.

Waking up in Miami. Five Photographers on the Road incorporates the partial presentation of the A. Lilia Smith's work Where Memories Reside, produced between 2011 and 2015. In it, she approaches the South-Florida landscape as a repository of personal and family remembrances in an allusive way far from the documentary style. Finally, the exhibition includes four photographs from the Lion, Fountain, and Statue Series, by Silvia Lizama, made in 2014. In these series, open to social and cultural readings, the artist examines the decorative practice in the open-air of private homes across South Florida that versions the Greco-Roman sculptures in cement, resin, and other cheap materials.

All the works in the exhibition share several features: maybe one of the most important could be the meditative, reflective way the photographers recorded their particular subjects.

About the artists

G. A. Jakubovics, From the series Seeking a Code, 2014-2017

Silvia Lizama, From the Lion, Fountain, and Statue Series, 2014

Jorge Sánchez, From the series 6.9 or Less, 2011-2014

A. Lilia Smith, From the series Where Memories Reside, 2011-2015

Mitya Trotsky, From the project Today is the day, 2015

The artists’ biographies can be consulted on www.artmedia.gallery

About the curator

Cuban-born, José Antonio Navarrete resided in Venezuela for two decades. He currently lives and works in Miami, Florida. He is a critic, researcher, and independent curator of culture and visual arts, with an extensive written production, who recently began to practice photography and video.

About the gallery

Artmedia Gallery was founded in 2012. With a location in Little River, Miami, Florida, the gallery has the mission to exhibit and promote contemporary art. One of the gallery’s central objectives is to explore the vast possibilities of the expanded notion of art through media technology, with photography and video as its core interest.