“Fire Figure Fantasy” is ICA Miami’s first major exhibition to showcase its permanent collection, with a focus on recent acquisitions. Since its founding in 2014, ICA Miami has established itself as a singular voice in artistic stewardship and research with a collection that champions leading emerging and established artists. Local and national voices are represented in dialogue with some of the most experimental global practices, further enriched by the dynamic context of Miami.
Spanning nearly the entirety of the museum’s exhibition space, “Fire Figure Fantasy” revolves around important focal points of ICA Miami’s collection: social justice, newly emerging technologies, and recent global crises that challenge and reconfigure museum institutions themselves. The exhibition opens with this last theme, bringing together a group of artists interested in engaging, interpreting, and rewriting institutional histories by shifting and diversifying entrenched art historical precedents. A focal point is Henry Taylor’s large-scale painting The Last Supper (2018), which examines race and labor, employing the conventions of history painting, while in Label QualiParis (2020), Esteban Jefferson considers the flawed and fictitious foundation of the Western canon. At the same time, Umar Rashid offers mythical status to the spaces and events that define our contemporary moment. Throughout the exhibition, artists working in a wide range of mediums, including McArthur Binion, Lauren Halsey, Rashid Johnson, Cameron Rowland, and Sable Elyse Smith, draw on the strategies of conceptual art to critically explore structures that perpetuate injustice on a systemic level.
Reflecting ICA Miami’s active and prolific commissioning program, the exhibition features a number of new works commissioned by the museum that will be on view for the first time. Additionally, works by Eddie Arroyo, Vivian Caccuri, Tau Lewis, and Vaughn Spann contend with some of the most pressing issues of our time, while works by Hernan Bas, Tomm El-Saieh, and Jared McGriff, among others, reflect the artistic production of Miami artists that the museum has long championed.
Special Exhibition / 2nd Floor
Special Exhibition / 3rd Floor
Ground Floor
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