Faena Prize For The Arts Debuts In Miami: 2022 Awardee Paula De Solminihac To Present Her ‘Morning Glory’ Installation During Miami Art Week

This year’s Faena Art Annual Gala, entitled “Patterns of Paradise” invited guests to dress in their favorite patterns “to create a perfect mismatch” in celebration of the non-profit’s support of cross-disciplinary art and talent.

Held at the Rem Koolhaas-designed Faena Forum, it was an evening of interconnectivity between cultures and art where guests enjoyed an artistic intervention by Xander Ferreira; live performances by Kiani Del Valle, Gazelle, Tai’Aysha, and SeeMeNot; a DJ set by Pascal Moscheni; and culinary showcases by Faena Group chefs Francis Mallmann, Paul Qui, and Frédéric Monnet, and Erik Ramirez from Llama Inn in New York. “At Faena, we do fantasy—experiences that people don’t imagine,” founder Alan Faena declared at the event.

Importantly, the gala marked the awarding of the 2022 Faena Prize for the Arts on the occasion of the prize’s inaugural presentation in Miami, where multidisciplinary artists were invited to present site-sensitive works that rethink time-based practices and dialogue with the Faena Beach, while engaging with the cultural and urban conditions of the city of Miami, awarding the winner a total of $100,000.

Chilean artist Paula de Solminihac has been awarded with the presentation of her large-scale, site-responsive topographic installation “Morning Glory” at Faena Beach during Miami Art Week 2022. It will use the sands of Faena Beach as both its primary material and device for construction. Composed of wooden decks resembling the flowers and leaves of the beach morning glory plant, “Morning Glory” will invite interaction and play for everyone on the beach, from touching, playing, resting, watching, listening, and exploring the installation. At night, when the beach is closed to the public, “Morning Glory” will become illuminated and generate a totally different sensory experience than from the day.

The installation takes the form of the beach morning glory, a traveling evergreen vine that is present throughout the beaches of Florida and in different parts of the world. While feminine in aesthetic, once embedded onto a beach, the plant both prevents sand dunes from moving against strong winds and eventually becomes the humus soil that gives rise to other organisms.

“Following five successful editions in Buenos Aires, we are thrilled to debut the Faena Prize for the Arts in Miami with Paula de Solminihac’s vision for Faena Beach during this year’s Miami Art Week,” Faena remarked. “Actively contributing to Miami Beach as a nurturing site for the community, Paula’s proposed installation—and the artist’s largest-scale work to date—physically embodies this vibrant city Faena Art is deeply committed to.”

During this time, De Solminihac will also be having a daily activation, with a different one taking place on a different petal of the “Morning Glory.”

“The main issue of the work is to create spaces, the leaves and the flowers create 10 different spaces that are joined by a path that is the stem and that will be a pathway,” she tells Forbes. “Parallel to my artistic work—I direct a foundation that works with education—so for me to create a space, there needs to be a program directly associated with it because if not, it’s as if you built a house and you’re not planning to live in the house. Hence, I have designed a program to take place [during Miami Art Week] on each of the leaves of the flowers, with a different activation for each day so [the general public] could use the space to generate different thoughts about the importance to be in collaboration and in good shape with the environment.”

Some of these activations include breath work to unlearn preconceived notions; exercises with art students regarding soil; and a sunset jamming session where the sense of hearing will be heightened.

“Morning Glory” will be unveiled the evening of November 29 and will be on view through December 4.

Faena Art also awards runner-up Paloma Bosquê with an iteration of her proposal “Education by the Stone” in the Faena Art Project Room on view in 2023.