Originally presented during Faena Festival: The Last Supper as part of the Open Air Cinema Series on Faena Beach, Antonia Wright's Be is now on view at Faena New York, bringing renewed visibility to a work first experienced through one of Miami Beach's most unconventional public art platforms.
From Miami Beach’s open-air cinematic landscape to an intimate presentation in New York, Be continues to invite viewers into a meditation on fragility, resilience, and the possibility of peace amid uncertainty.
As part of the 2019 edition of Faena Festival, Faena Art reimagined the LED billboard boats typically associated with commercial advertising as moving vessels for Mobile Video Installations and a public Open Air Cinema series. Free and open to the public, the program activated the waterways and shoreline of Miami Beach with films and video works exploring humanity’s relationship to nature, spirituality, ritual, food, and the sacred. Throughout the festival, video installations traveled across the oceanfront while nightly screenings took place directly on Faena Beach, transforming the coastline into a communal cinematic experience. Within this context, Antonia Wright’s Be (2013) emerged as one of the program’s most arresting works.
The single-channel video depicts the artist covered by a colony of 15,000 bees while practicing Tai Chi in a state of profound stillness. Developed following extensive meditation and Tai Chi training, including time spent studying at an ashram in India, the work examines the tension between vulnerability and control, danger and peace. Addressing both environmental pressures affecting bee populations and the emotional climate of contemporary life, Be proposes calmness not as passivity, but as a radical act of balance and coexistence. Its presentation today at Faena New York extends the work’s resonance beyond its original beachfront setting, reaffirming the enduring power of public art to evolve across time and place.
The Faena Art Digital Art Program presents a curated selection of video and digital artworks, transforming the monitor into a space for experimentation, reflection, and dialogue between art, technology, and the viewer. Conceived as a living exhibition in the corridor of Faena New York, the program expands beyond the traditional gallery format through works that unfold across time, movement, and image. In line with Faena Art’s mission to foster artistic experimentation, the program supports emerging voices while continuing collaborations with artists connected to Faena Art’s history. The selected works explore themes of identity, culture, community, technology, memory, and social experience, reflecting how artists engage with contemporary life and the communities that shape it.
