**Sandra Brewster** *Blur 20*, 2021 Photo-based gel transfer on archival paper, ed. ⅔ 39” x 34” paper / 42.5” x 37” framed. Courtesy of Olga Korper Gallery. © SANDRA BREWSTER

Written By Makenna Karas

Copy Edited By Julian Tsai

The art event of the year is back with brilliance in the Magic City. Planes are descending as we speak, ushering in art connoisseurs from all over the world to the highly-anticipated unveiling of this year’s Art Basel Miami Beach. Open to the public at the Miami Beach Convention Center, North America’s premier, world-class art fair has returned to the shores of Miami Beach for its 21st birthday in a dazzling event that will run from December 8th through December 10th. With a punctuated focus on modern and contemporary art, the fair centers around showcasing the top artists and curators from all over the world in a sprawling display that will consist of 277 galleries, large-scale projects, curated exhibits, and surveys of artistic practices throughout history.

**Art Basel Miami Beach** Courtesy of Art Basel

Brooklyn native renowned photographer Texas Isaiah will be showcasing his new series “It’s the Starkness of the Day” through Residency Art Gallery this year in a stunning array of photographs that speak to the profound, lonely experience of navigating grief. Informing the collection is Isaiah’s own experience with losing both his aunt and grandmother within two weeks of one another, as well as the relentless grief that accompanies witnessing the increasing rates of violence against Black, LGBTQ+ individuals. The series interrogates the home that grief makes within the body, pushing the mind to grapple with and move beyond the losses that it aches from witnessing. It allocates space for genuine feeling in a world that breeds stoic apathy, revealing the beauty of the human experience and the hope that is necessary to move through it.

**Texas Isaiah** *A Recollection: My Grandson’s Stretch*, 2023. Courtesy of the artist andResidency Art Gallery

Also highlighted within Art Basel is the Argentinian gallery, Rolf Art, that will pay homage to the late avant-garde Argentinian artist from the 1980s, Liliana Maresca, and her collaborations with photographer Marcos López. Saturated in unconventionality, the exhibit will expose how Maresca fearlessly pushed boundaries and ventured down unexplored avenues of creation that earned her work the seductive longevity that it holds today. In honor of that earned legacy, the exhibit will flaunt her most alluring and memorable works that she produced with Marcos López, from “Liliana Maresca with her artwork” (1983) to “Imagen Pública - Altas Esferas” (1993).

***Liliana Maresca*** *Untitled*. *Liliana Maresca with her artworks.* Photoperformance. Photography by Marcos López 1983. Print date 2016. Selenium gelatin silver print on Ilford fiber paper. Image dimensions 13.2 x 8.7 in. Paper size 15.9 x 11.9 in. Edition 10 + A/P

**Liliana Maresca** *Untitled. Public image - High political spheres.* Photoperformance. Photography by Marcos López 1993, late print 2004 - 2016. Selenium gelatin silver print on Ilford fiber paper. 8.7 x 13.2 in. Edition 10 + A/P © Liliana Maresca Estate & Marcos López

Rolf Art will also be showcasing the work of the Argentinian photographer and human rights activist, Marcelo Brodsky, through his series “1968: El fuego de las Ideas”, a collection that he has devoted the past nine years to cultivating. Focused primarily on the social and political upheaval that took place globally in the 1960s, the collection tells the story of the struggles and conflicts that have left deep scars on our world, interrogating justice and what it means to fight for change in a world ravished with inequity. Brodsky intentionally marks the images with inked lettering, issuing notes to the viewer that breathe contemporary life into historical events. The bright lettering invites the audience to remember the story of our world, and to keep fighting to write a better one.

From the series 1968: The fire of the ideas *Amsterdam, 1967*. Year 2014-2023. Black and white archival photograph © Spaarnestad Collection. National Archief,1967, intervened with handwritten texts by Marcelo Brodsky, 2016. Inkjet print with hard pigment ink on Hahnemühle cotton paper. 35.4 x 23.6 in. Edition 7 + A/P

These, as well as hundreds of other galleries and exhibitions, will be available for viewing all weekend long, turning Miami Beach into a hotspot for artistic brilliance.