The Best Booths at Untitled Art Miami Beach, From Potato Sculptures to Ominous Razors

Mitzi Falcon at the Ant Project

Mexico City–based artist Mitzi Falcon’s paired photographs and found objects make up one of Untitled’s most striking booths. The photos are portraits, some of them slightly obscured, of six queer and trans construction workers. Having grown up alongside these workers, Falcon depicts them in their communities, charting how they embrace their identities. Sitting on cinder blocks below the photographs are the workers’ actual work boots. Hanging above are their hard hats, upon which their names assigned at birth have been crossed out; their chosen names have been written above.

Accompanying the installation are postcards for each of the individuals that provide more details on their age, industry, and weekly salary, as well as a short statement from each. The fiercest of these is Rosario, a 30-year-old ironworker who moved to Mexico City at 16 and started out as a sex worker to help fund her transition. She says, “One day, when I felt ready and my family’s economic situation had stabilized, I decide to leave that world. An acquaintance from my town told me that there was a construction project and invited me to work with him. … What I like most about my job is that it makes me feel so strong, so powerful.”

Ernesto Restrepo Morillo at SGR Galería

A piece on the floor in Bogotá-based SGR Galería’s booth looks at first like it might just be a market stand selling potatoes. But it is actually part of a long-running series by the Colombian artist Ernesto Restrepo Morillo, who began producing sculptures like this one in 1992 and has since been lovingly known in his home country as El Papas (The Potato Man).

When he initiated this series in the ’90s, Restrepo Morillo was thinking through the destructive forces of colonialism without actually representing them. Among the crops that were native only to the Americas is the humble potato, which was brought home by Europeans who came to colonize the region. There, it became a staple during times of famine. Each year he has made a new entry in this series. Section (of the Marketplace) of Common Altiplano Potatoes, the one on view at Untitled, is his 31st “harvest,” and it includes realistic-looking potatoes rendered in ceramic, concrete, and cloth. Several sacks are available for purchase; the gallery has additional mesh casing on hand for people to create their own bundles.

Erick Antonio Benitez at Selenas Mountains

Erick Antonio Benitez’s ATM Bob Marley (2023) is based on an experience the artist had while waiting in line at a Wells Fargo ATM. The Los Angeles–based artist was intrigued by the dichotomy of seeing someone getting cash while wearing a hoodie showing Bob Marley, whose music and activism were staunchly anticapitalist. This fascinating painting comes replete with a black bandana hanging out of the man’s back pocket; jewelry embedded on his finger, ear, and wrist; and a video playing on loop featuring a flying stack of cash. Within the context of an art fair, an event whose main purpose is to generate sales, the work’s presence is intentionally off-putting.

Annie Duncan at Johansson Projects

In the center of the Johansson Projects booth are two plinths filled with a sundry mix of large-scale ceramic versions of everyday objects: a hair clip, pink disposable razors, cherry chapstick, a purple clock, a ring, a heart-shaped lock, and a candle. At first glance the works are playful—intentionally so. But they also reflect the artist’s own anxieties about the societal pressures that women often face: rendered at an ominously large scale, the sculptures turn small objects associated with femininity and beauty nightmarishly big.

Kelani Abass at 31 Project

Lagos-based artist Kelani Abass, a memorable participant in the Museum of Modern Art’s recent “New Photography” show, mines his father’s printing press archive to create the beguiling assemblages on view here. Collectively titled “Scrap of Evidence,” the works in this group pair images of people dressed to the nines posing for the camera. Some of their images appear as archival photographs, others as re-created paintings; all are presented alongside letterpress types, rubber blocks, and metal rails from the press. Taken together, the series acts as both a history of Abass’s family as well as 1960s Nigeria, where a middle class rose after the country achieved independence.   

Natia Lemay at Yossi Milo

Yossi Milo has two tender black tondo paintings on view by Natia Lemay, an artist who is of Black, Mi’kmaw, and Settler descent who will participate in the Fountainhead Residency in Miami next year. These dark, brushy paintings are created from memory, drawing on the artist’s own childhood. As a kid, she often had unstable housing, and her parents had substance abuse disorders. She sees these works as self-portraits that extend across time. In one, a mother and child sit at a table looking forlorn.

Mia Weiner at CULT Aimee Friberg

This diptych weaving shows two nude figures embracing in both its panels and acts as a commanding presence in CULT Aimee Friberg’s booth. Artist Mia Weiner bases her weavings on images that she often digitally alters, then methodically maps them so that she can craft them by hand using a loom. Weiner only came to weaving during grad school, having previously worked with other modes of textiles first; she was drawn to the medium because, unlike sewing, no material had to pierced to achieve a final result.