Dark Continents. From Sep 26th through Nov 9th, 2008. 
The Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami has organized Dark Continents, an exhibition that revisits the modernist fascination with tropical locales and indigenous people prevalent during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Artists in the exhibition examine ideas and aesthetics that were popular during this time period and relate them to current views by challenging stereotypical relationships that associate femininity with nature. The exhibition also confronts the elements that impacted “primitivist” and “exotic” tendencies in art history, such as colonialist perspectives, industrialization, and the popularization of psychoanalysis.
This group show is curated by Ruba Katrib, MOCA Assistant Curator, and it features works by artists such as Ida Ekblad, Hadassah Emmerich, Naomi Fisher, Elke Krystufek, Marlene McCarty, Claudia and Julia Müller, and Paulina Olowska. Many of the artists are creating new works for this exhibition that include site-specific wall murals and installations in media such as painting, drawing, sculpture, collage and video. Oslo-based Ida Ekblad’s new work stems from her ongoing series of sculptures and drawings that uses appropriated mass-media images depicting non-Western cultures.
Miami artist Naomi Fisher’s new installation, featuring painting, photography and video, reflects her interest in the merging of the “savage” and “goddess” myths. Claudia and Julia Müller, sisters from Switzerland, employ anthropological techniques to create artworks dealing with cultural perceptions, history, fictions and the display of ethnological information.
Premiering in the US, Love on Easter Island and A Film Called Wood, are two films by Austrian artist Elke Krystufek in which she uses Bas Jan Ader, the Dutch artist who disappeared in 1975 trying to sail across the Atlantic, as her male alter ego in a self-reflexive exploration through the South Pacific, India, and Austria. New York-based Marlene McCarty takes true stories about primates and people trying to live together as the basis for her large-scale ballpoint pen drawings, in which humans and apes are entwined in intricate embraces.
Polish artist Paulina Olowska’s new work pays tribute to Zofia Stryjenska, who was once considered the “Princess of Polish Painting,” but fell to obscurity after World War II when she refused to join the new Communist government’s union of artists.
Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami
770 NE 125th Street
North Miami, FL 33161
305.893.6211
www.mocanomi.org
Sympathy for the Devil: Art and Rock and Roll Since 1967, on view at MOCA North Miami, is a traveling exhibition organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago and curated by Dominic Molon. The group exhibition has been regarded as the most serious and comprehensive look at the intimate and inspired relationship between the visual arts and rock-and-roll culture to date, charting their intersection through works of art, album covers, music videos, and other materials. Comprising approximately one hundred works, the exhibition addresses the importance of specific cities such as London, New York, Los Angeles, and Cologne; rock-and-roll’s style, celebrity, and identity politics in art; the experience, energy, and sense of devotion rock music inspires; and the dual role that many individuals play in both the sonic and visual realms. 
The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), North Miami recently announced that it has received a $5 million endowment from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. The Knight Exhibition Endowment was announced by Knight Foundation President and CEO Alberto Ibarguen and will enable MOCA to present three exhibitions or multi-media projects each year featuring the work of emerging and experimental artists, as well as develop innovative public and education programs. The endowment will fund MOCA’s new Knight Exhibition Series. The endowment is part of the new Knight Arts Partnership, a $60 million philanthropic initiative created by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to advance the arts in South Florida through three institutional endowments and an open-invitation community challenge. 
The Museum of Contemporary Art is presenting the first American survey of the work of artist Karen Kilimnik . Kilimnik draws upon imagery from popular consumer culture, historical events and literature to create a new romanticism that is at once seductive and unnerving. Kilimnik, who was born in Philadelphia in 1957, is widely considered one of the most influential artists of her generation.
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