Experiential trends from Miami Art Week
Experiential trends 2024:
Miami Art Week
Miami Art Week remains a fertile playground for artistic brand expression, promotion and collaborative stretch. From high fashion houses, auto and alcohol brands to a titan of toy making, we highlight four trends offering inspiration from the December 2023 edition, including adventures in experiential artificial intelligence (and real-life surrealism), super natural energy, heritage remixed and nostalgia-tinted playscapes.
1. Super Natural Energy
2. Surrealism IRL: Adventures in Experiential AI
3. Heritage Remixed, and on the Road
4. Kidulting & The Liberation of Play
Super Natural Energy
Echoing new concepts and future-positive messaging, the grand imperative was to rethink our relationship with nature and indigenous cultures, including recasting green energy and biomaterials via a seductively inspirational design lens.
Solar-Powered Spin on Sensorial Interplay: Illustrating new frontiers in solar power, award-winning Dutch solar designer Marjan van Aubel crafted a life-size version of Japanese brand Lexus’s Zero-Emission Catalyst concept car in the gardens of Miami’s Institute of Contemporary Art from organic photovoltaic, aka solar, cells – non-mechanical devices that convert sunlight directly into electricity.
Titled 8 Minutes and 20 Seconds (referencing the time in which sunlight travels to Earth), the solar cells responded dynamically to visitors’ ebb and flow, shifting from transparency to glorious technicolour.
Credit: Photography by Steve Benisty
Surrealism IRL: Adventures in Experiential AI
Tapping into the growing audience appetite for hyperrealism in physical environments as well as online, several installations offered significant spatial inspiration by fusing virtual, AI-fuelled dreamscapes and surrealistic iconography with the tactile frisson of physical environments.
Making Placemaking Feel Mutable: Barcelona-based Argentinian digital artist Andrés Reisinger brought his Take Over series (AI-fuelled artworks reimagining the historical architecture of various capital cities in fluffy, colour-saturated and even hairy surrealistic forms) to the streets of Miami.
Conceived to “transcend mere visuality and become a confrontation” – according to Reisinger – it involved the draping of a voluminous pink sheet over a building in the Miami Design District and resembled a contemporised version of the site-specific supersized works of the late iconic Bulgarian artist Christo.
Credit: Andrés Reisinger
Heritage Remixed
Heritage matters: rounding off a year of luxury brands flaunting their heritage credentials via opulent travelling exhibitions, Swiss fine jeweller/ watchmaker Cartier unleashed its roaming self-homage.
Enlivening Legacy: Cartier unveiled Time Unlimited (commenced in Hong Kong in 2022), which, echoing Gucci’s collaboration with star British scenographer Es Devlin, was designed by Perron-Roettinger (US) – renowned for work on live stadium shows for megastars, including Rihanna, as well as (latterly) furniture and interior projects.
Credit: Cartier images by Michael Stavaridis
Kidulting & The Liberation of Play
Homing in on the power of play, including the allure of nostalgia in new formats and the evolved notion of kidulting (childlike, now often encompassing mindfulness-inducing activities for adults), several brands backed inspirational playscapes and/or campaigns with an overtly liberating sense of playfulness. Embracing cultural diversity underscored more than one.
Nostalgia in Tantalising Technicolour Redefines Luxury Codes: Culturally diversifying its collaborator portfolio for 2023, Porsche partnered with Brooklyn-based Haitian illustrator Lyne Lucien on a series of artworks featuring iconic Porsches, with titles including the Dollworld Diaries and Garden Safari, grounded in the surrealistic, fantastical memories of the artist’s childhood. The artist commented on Instagram: “OFC, I made them blackity black black […] it was a real opportunity to disrupt how we’ve been defining luxury.”
Credit: Porsche x Lyne Lucien
Key Learnings
Creatively Recast Eco
Recast sustainability through the innovation-led desirability lens, inspiring your audiences with a focus on future- proofing, but keep a keen eye on aesthetic and sensorial pleasure. Two of the most revered initiatives were Lexus’s partnership with Marjan van Aubel (uniting art, green tech and multisensory delight in a breathtaking set piece) and digital couture house Syky’s biomaterials- inspired mintable art.
Harness Hyper- Surrealism IRL
Generative-AI-invoked surrealistic worlds are busting through the confines of digital platforms and entering the real world, as epitomised by Andrés Reisinger, the overlord of wondrous digital décor and architecture, going fully physical. Reflect audiences’ growing affinity with blended realities in your physical spaces, but note the power of designs with almost imperceptible parameters: weirder isn’t always the most wonderful.
Cater for Archive/ Asset Culture Connoisseurship
While occupying very different cultural spaces, both the Cartier exhibition and The Art of Hip Hop deliver strongly on the consumer/fan appetite for experiencing archive products and material made relevant to contemporary culture.
Call Out to Kidults
The allure of nostalgia in new formats crystallised in 2023, from the Barbie movie phenomenon to Mattel’s Creations (its special division where innovative creatives reimagine classic models) becoming one of its most popular sub-brands. Coupled with the adult desire to participate in childlike activities to de-stress, expect activations rooted in the power of play to reap serious wins in 2024.