SAB Gallery Presents

Farnaz Harouni: MIAMI MIRAGE

CONTEXT Art Miami | Booth B23 | December 2–7, 2025

SAB Gallery is proud to present MIAMI MIRAGE, a vibrant new collection by multidisciplinary artist, designer, and professor Farnaz Harouni, debuting at CONTEXT Art Miami, Booth B23, from December 2–7 during Miami Art Week / Art Basel.

About MIAMI MIRAGE

Electric Color. Sculptural Glamour. Miami Energy.**

In MIAMI MIRAGE, Farnaz Harouni transforms the human lip into a radiant, electrified canvas—capturing the pulse, rhythm, and sensory heat of Miami’s cultural landscape.

Her works vibrate with:

• bold neon palettes
• iridescent, shimmering textures
• sculptural surfaces that feel alive
• energy reminiscent of Miami nightlife, sound, and movement

The collection celebrates the lip as both a universal symbol of expression and an iconic object of desire, echoing the way Miami communicates through color, rhythm, and perpetual motion. Harouni channels the city’s eclectic swirl of music, fashion, and art into each piece, creating an immersive, high-gloss universe where glamour becomes language.

“The lips are a universal symbol of the power of self-expression and an iconic object of desire,” says Farnaz Harouni.
“In a place as vibrant as Miami—where art, music, and culture collide—I want to magnify that power. My work aims to provoke thought, evoke joy, and celebrate collective beauty through the lens of individual diversity.”

About the Artist: Farnaz Harouni

Farnaz Harouni is a Los Angeles–based multidisciplinary Artist, Designer, and Professor recognized for her radiant aesthetic and deeply humanistic vision. A top graduate of Otis College of Art and Design, she blends fine art, couture fashion, and interior design into a seamless creative language—earning prestigious awards and building a following among celebrities, collectors, and global tastemakers.

For over 17 years, Harouni has shaped emerging artists as a dedicated Professor at Otis. Her commitment to mentorship, community, and philanthropic work reflects the generosity and intention at the heart of her artistic practice.

Drawing inspiration from:

• global travel
• cultural diversity
• nature’s geometry and luminosity

Harouni infuses each creation with joy, meaning, and a sense of universal connection.

Artist: Farnaz Harouni
Collection: MIAMI MIRAGE
Presented by: SAB Gallery
Fair: CONTEXT Art Miami
Booth: B23
Dates: December 2–7, 2025
Location: One Herald Plaza, Downtown Miami on Biscayne Bay

About SAB Gallery

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SAB Gallery is dedicated to presenting contemporary artists whose work expands the dialogue between material innovation, conceptual depth, and visual impact.

The Wolfsonian–FIU at 30: Design’s Past, Miami’s Present, and a Global Future

Written By Olga Garcia-Mayoral

Exhibition Openings & 30th Anniversary Celebration — November 20, 2025

Interview with Chief Curator Silvia Barisione

Walking up Washington Avenue on a bright November afternoon, the Wolfsonian–FIU still looks like a citadel: a muscular, stone-fronted landmark whose Deco-defiant bulk suggests the word Barisione herself used—fortress. Inside, however, the building opens like a cabinet of wonders. For the museum’s 30th anniversary, the drawers are pulled wide: two new exhibitions—Modern Design Across Borders and La Superba: Genoa and The Wolfsoniana—double as a birthday party and a mini-manifesto for what the Wolfsonian has always done best: tell world history through objects.

On the eve of the opening, Chief Curator Silvia Barisione joined me by phone from the galleries, where crews were finessing sightlines and labels. Our conversation swung from institutional mission to the nitty-gritty of plywood and cocktail shakers; it felt like the museum itself—scholarly and sensuous, global and granular.

“Object Stories” and a 30-Year Ethos

Asked what the Wolfsonian’s most significant contribution has been since opening in 1995, Barisione didn’t hesitate. “We try to talk about design through objects,” she said, “but we are not just a design museum. We can contextualize design objects with books, paintings, graphic design, posters—materials that let us tell object stories inside their economic and social background.”

That phrase—object stories—is the key. It’s why a travel poster can sit beside a teapot and a painting; why a piece of furniture converses with a propaganda booklet. The Wolfsonian’s strength has always been its will to connect; to show how things move across borders, circulate through markets, and gather meanings in the rooms where people live, work, and dream.

Being part of Florida International University, Barisione added, amplifies that mission. “Now we are closer to students. They come as interns, they research in the library, and we collaborate with professors. Being in the university helps us spread our mission.” The pipeline flows both ways. While FIU supports the museum, founder Mitchell “Micky” Wolfson, Jr. continues to collect with tireless curiosity—especially “books and ephemera,” Barisione noted—expanding a collection so vast that “we keep discovering things every time we do an exhibition.”

Modern Design Across Borders: Five Ways Design Travels

The anchor show, Modern Design Across Borders, focuses on the global circulations of interwar design. Rather than march chronologically, Barisione has built five “spotlight” themes—transportation, the 1925 Paris Expo, tea & coffee, plywood, and cocktail culture—that trace specific channels through which forms, materials, and habits moved.

“We wanted to celebrate design, one of our strengths,” she explained. “Lately we have done more exhibitions with paintings and graphic design—more two-dimensional objects—so this was a way to return to design, and also to celebrate many donations we have received in the last years.” The framing matters now, too: “It’s the moment to talk about global connections, cultural exchange on every level.”

Transportation anchors the story in streamlined modernity—those aerodynamic curves that shaped trains, ocean liners, automobiles, and aircraft, then boomeranged back into domestic life. Barisione loves tracing the echo: “You see streamlined shapes in the great ships and planes, and then you find them in everyday objects,” she said, pointing to cocktail shakers and siphons whose gleaming profiles miniaturize the promise of speed.

The 1925 Paris Exposition serves as a hinge: a world’s fair where national pavilions became laboratories of style, and where designers, manufacturers, and audiences tested what “modern” might look like in furniture, textiles, and tableware. The Wolfsonian installation teases out these crossings, using posters, catalogues, and objects to show how display culture accelerated design exchange.

Tea & coffee sets become a micro-history of ritual and industry. Colonial supply lines and metropolitan taste interlock in metal, porcelain, and glass. A service designed for one market could quickly migrate to another via trade fairs and department-store buyers; motifs shift language as they shift latitude.

Plywood maps a technological network: from early European innovation and export (Barisione notes how importers circulated bent and laminated woods) to mid-century American adoption, and forward to contemporary makers. “We end with a contemporary piece to show how plywood still inspires companies today,” she said—proof that material intelligence outlives fashion.

Cocktail culture—a theme with obvious Miami resonance—shows how the bar became a stage for modern living: chrome, glass, and lacquer; ergonomics scaled to the hand; social rituals tuned by design. “I wanted to connect to local culture,” Barisione told me. “Cocktail culture is such a Miami thing—so it made sense here.”

One object crystallizes how these strands braid together: a streamlined jug associated with the 1930s ocean-liner era, designed in dialogue with a ship’s aerodynamic profile and then mass-produced for the home. “The shapes inspired housewares,” Barisione said, “a contrast between the luxury of the liner and the accessible object in your kitchen—yet both speak the same design language.”

Does one theme “best” capture design as a universal language? Barisione resists the ranking. “I tried to be international in every theme,” she said. Designers migrate; companies hire across borders; imports and exports reshape taste. Plywood is a case in point: “From the turn of the century in Europe to examples in Finland, California, Virginia… you see production traveling from Europe to the United States and vice versa.”

That past is prelude. “Design is even more global now than in the interwar period,” she added, citing the contemporary plywood commission by a Finnish company working with an American designer: a tidy embodiment of the 2020s design ecosystem in which education, fabrication, and distribution are routinely transnational.

La Superba: Genoa, The Wolfsoniana, and a Transatlantic Bridge

If Modern Design Across Borders maps global flows, La Superba narrows the lens to a single port city—Genoa—and to the Wolfsonian’s sister institution in Liguria, The Wolfsoniana. “It was the right moment,” Barisione said, “because we celebrate the 20th anniversary of The Wolfsoniana, which opened in 2005—ten years after the Wolfsonian in Miami. It was a good opportunity to celebrate both institutions.” The two share DNA without sharing administrations: FIU governs in Miami; in Genoa, the collection is overseen by the Fondazione Palazzo Ducale ecosystem (Barisione referenced a new foundation structure). The transatlantic relationship remains active and generative.

The selection includes travel posters, paintings, and decorative arts that depict Genoa as both a cultural and industrial hub in the early 20th century. “Genoa is a port city,” Barisione emphasized, “with a powerful steel industry and a commercial center. You can see it in paintings of the harbor and workers, and in posters that present the city and the Riviera.” The curatorial pairing with Miami is sly: Genoa/Sestri Ponente and Miami/Miami Beach mirror each other as urban cores flanked by seaside districts—palms and promenades binding very different histories through everyday geographies.

Barisione highlighted a painting of a harbor scene in which a worker cradles a fallen comrade—an image whose humanist gravity echoes the gravity of Italian neorealist cinema. “It reflects the atmosphere of the period,” she said. What’s remarkable is the way drawings and studies for such works can be split—by intention—between the two institutions, a chessboard of loans that sustains scholarly exchange “on both sides of the ocean.” That dialogue extends to the Wolfsonian library, where researchers encounter Italian materials and then trace those threads to Genoa. “We have study centers in both places,” Barisione said. “It’s a way to keep the conversation alive.”

Two Shows, One Milestone: The Curatorial Lift

Staging two substantial exhibitions for a single anniversary is no small feat. “Working on two shows is more challenging—as you can imagine,” Barisione laughed. The complexity isn’t just logistics; it’s intellectual. Modern Design Across Borders was never meant to be a totalizing history of design, yet it had to “create connections” broad and precise enough to land with Miami audiences. “At first I thought to focus only on coffee culture,” she admitted, “but then tea made sense, and cocktail culture connects to Miami. I wanted a thread on local life.”

Behind the scenes, the curators continually unearth objects Micky Wolfson acquired decades ago that are only now coming into focus. “Every exhibition requires research—things are still to be catalogued, still to be understood,” Barisione said. It’s the kind of “problem” museums dream of: too much good material, not enough time.

The Next Chapter: Opening the “Fortress”

Where does the Wolfsonian go from here? Barisione hopes for more—more space, more students, more community. “We always hope to become bigger and to involve even more of the community,” she said. One path is programming with contemporary artists and designers who can read the collection against the present. “It’s important to understand the present through the past—but also to have new views on the collection.”’

And the building? Barisione is sensitive to the way the museum’s protective posture—hardened for hurricane seasons—can feel remote from the street. “Sometimes it is not inviting. It’s not so inclusive for people passing by,” she acknowledged. The work ahead is architectural and conceptual: to keep the collection safe while making the threshold more porous—to make the “fortress” feel like a forum.’

Miami’s Design Museum, Again and Anew

On opening night, Modern Design Across Borders and La Superba read as two sides of the same coin: one narrating how design travels; the other showing where those travels land and launch. Together, they restate the Wolfsonian’s founding wager: that you can understand the world—its ideologies, fantasies, and labors—through the things it makes.

.

In Barisione’s words, “We tell stories through objects.” At 30, the Wolfsonian is still doing exactly that—only now, the stories loop even more clearly from Miami to Genoa and back again, from ships to shakers, from plywood to posters, from classrooms to galleries. The anniversary isn’t a victory lap so much as a recommitment: to scholarship rooted in things, to public life animated by design, and to a city that has grown up alongside a museum that insists the modern is always, already, a conversation across borders.

Modern Design Across Borders and La Superba: Genoa and The Wolfsoniana

On View November 20, 2025 – June 28, 2026

Adriana Torres Torchez: Painting hugs with open arms in Miami

@adrianatorrestorchez

Adrianatorrestorchez.com

Artist and cultural manager Adriana Torres Torchez, renowned for her international career and for representing Mexico at the Venice Biennale – Personal Structures – continues to consolidate her visual language, grounded in connection and hope.

Her most recent series, such as “Hugs with Open Arms,” evokes the healing power of the embrace through expansive, luminous strokes that invite human encounter, starting with the “autism we all have.” Her work has been successfully exhibited in various cities around the world and contemporary art spaces, reaffirming her vision that art can unite, heal, and transform.

Adriana is currently preparing a new exhibition at TOP 67, an innovative creative economy space located at 6701 NE 3rd Ave, Miami, where she will present an installation inspired by the expansion of the soul and the energy of color. 

With each exhibition, Torchez reaffirms her commitment to art by positively provoking viewers through her long strokes that evoke emotion and foster inclusion. 

Read the full Art Miami Magazine digital edition here:

👉 https://artmiamimagazine.com/3d-flip-book/art-miami-magazine-miami-art-week-2025/

Pinta Miami 2025

Days and Hours
Thursday, December 4 – 3:00 PM to 8:00 PM
Friday, December 5 – 12:00 PM to 8:00 PM
Saturday, December 6 – 12:00 PM to 8:00 PM
Sunday, December 7 – 12:00 PM to 6:00 PM

Venue
The Hangar
Coconut Grove, FL

Pinta Miami will once again be one of the major highlights of Miami’s cultural calendar, taking place from December 4 to 7, 2025, when artists, collectors, and art enthusiasts will gather at Dinner Key, one of the city’s oldest neighborhoods located in Coconut Grove, to celebrate this renowned satellite fair that spotlights multidisciplinary and contemporary Latin American art.

Under the artistic direction of Irene Gelfman, Pinta’s celebrated Global Curator, the 19th edition will feature Isabella Lenzi (Artistic Director and Chief Curator at the Alberto Cruz Foundation, São Paulo) as curator of RADAR, the section dedicated to solo and duo projects. Meanwhile, Juan Canela, Chief Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Panama, will oversee NEXT, the section focused on emerging and experimental artists.

A broad diversity of artistic proposals will be presented this year, with nearly 40 participating galleries from Central, North and South America and Europe, showcasing more than 500 carefully selected works of art.

“Pinta Miami is the only fair during Miami Art Week that celebrates the diversity and vitality of Latin American art. In this 19th edition, I aim to create an intimate, dynamic, and participatory space that gives visibility to contemporary Latin American art scenes in dialogue with the world. Pinta Miami stands as the definitive event for Latin American art on the local agenda, a true meeting point for the international art community.”
— Irene Gelfman, Global Curator, Pinta

Outside the fair, the Sculpture Garden, curated by Irene Gelfman, will feature works by Priscila Schott, Alberto Cavalieri (VAG Victoria Art Gallery), and Rafael Barrios (Proyecto H, Mexico), exploring sculpture through geometry and abstraction.

Additionally, Argentine artist Nicola Costantino presents a Special Project in the form of a flower-art kiosk: handcrafted ceramic pieces that draw on ancestral knowledge and reimagine it in the present. The installation is presented by Pommery —The Art of Champagne—, a longstanding ally of contemporary creation and a committed supporter of Latin American artists.

Another highlight will be FORO, the Talks Program coordinated by Irene Gelfman, Pinta’s Global Curator, which—under the theme “Decoding the Art Market”—will bring together artists, curators, researchers, collectors, and cultural institutions for contemporary discussions on the development and creation of art projects from Latin America. The program will feature prominent speakers and renowned experts in Latin American contemporary art, including Spanish specialist María Sancho-Arroyo and Argentinian Juan Cruz Andrada, who will address topics such as art management challenges, the art market, the current regional art scene, AI, and more.

Through numerous institutional acquisitions, awards, and recognitions, Pinta Miami seeks to support artistic practice and foster collecting through both new and established prizes. The fair will present the EFG Latin American Art Award, in collaboraiion with Art Nexus. The winning work will be acquired for the EFG Capital collection and exhibited in Miami. Another important recognition will be the NEXT Prize, awarded to two galleries in that section by a specialized jury.

Book your flight and stay through our partner hotels

To fully enjoy the fair and the vibrant Miami Art Week, take advantage of Copa Airlines’ special discount >Click here.		JW Marriott Brickell, the official partner hotel of this edition.Promotional rates >Click here.

This year, the hotel renews its partnership with Pinta Miami, reaffirming its commitment to Latin American art and offering our visitors an experience deeply connected to the cultural pulse of the city.

Pinta Miami partners with JW Marriott Miami to present a pop-up exhibition by artist Priscila Schott. The JW Marriott Miami will host an exclusive lobby exhibition featuring a curated selection of geometric sculptures and artworks by Priscila Schott, known for transforming simple modules into participatory and vibrant environments. Curated by Irene Gelfman, Pinta’s Global Curator, the show will be in exhibition during December.

Participating Galleries – Pinta Miami 2025

ALA Projects – Nueva York, USA

AMIA – Buenos Aires, Argentina

Appart Paris – París, Francia

Artística – Asunción Paraguay

Aura Galeria – São Paulo, Brazil

ARTMIX – Brooklyn, USA

Art Nexus – Miami, USA

Beatriz Gil Galería – Caracas, Venezuela

Bernice Steinbaum Gallery – Miami, USA

Biga Art Gallery – Buenos Aires, Argentina

Carmen Araujo Arte – Caracas, Venezuela

Ceibo Gallery – Florida, USA

CRUDO – Rosario, Argentina / Buenos Aires, Argentina

ENCARTE – Mexico City, Mexico

Espacio Líquido – Gijón, Spain / Davidson North Carolina, USA

Espacio Mancha – Santiago, Chile

Fernando Pradilla – Madrid, Spain

Galería Arteconsult – Panama City, Panama

Galería Artizar – Tenerife, Spain

Galería El Museo – Bogotá, Colombia

Galería Petrus – San Juan, Puerto Rico

Galería Trinta – Santiago de Compostela, Spain

GBG ARTS – Caracas, Venezuela

Llamazares Galería – Gijón, Spain

LnS Gallery – Miami, USA

Lyv Gallery – Córdoba, Argentina

MARCI GAYMU GALLERY – Portimão, Portugal

Marissi Campos Galería – Lima, Peru

Mateo Sariel Galería – Panama City, Panama

Matia Borgonovo – San Salvador, El Salvador

Nohra Haime Gallery – Nueva York, USA

Pabellón 4 Arte Contemporáneo – Buenos Aires, Argentina

Pan American Art Projects – Miami, USA

Prima Galería – Santiago, Chile

Proyecto H -Mexico city, Mexico

Salar Galería de Arte – La Paz, Bolivia

Salón Comunal – Bogotá, Colombia

SEA Contemporary Art – Miami, USA

T20 – Murcia, Spain / Madrid, Spain

Tercera Avenida Projects – San Pedro Garza García, Mexico

The White Lodge – Córdoba, Argentina / Buenos Aires, Argentina

VAG – Coral Springs, USA

Verónica Viedma Arte – Asunción, Paraguay

YuVa galería de arte & diseño – Santiago del Estero, Argentina

We invite you to explore Pinta Miami’s Online Platform, where you can discover a selection of artworks that will be exhibited at the fair.
Access detailed images, wall views, prices, and direct contact with the galleries, allowing you to choose your next artwork or connect from anywhere in the world. Click here

Thanks to the support of EFG Wealth Management, Pinta Miami continues to demonstrate that exceptional art goes far beyond the Miami Beach Convention Center, revealing the depth and breadth of Latin American art and culture.