Art Miami 2017
Art Miami 2017- UNLEASHED: Connecting Thread Booth #A121 | Photos By: Ben Kazenoff
Each year we have the opportunity to showcase at Art Miami (which runs during Art Basel) and is one of the most well attended art fairs in the world. The AMAZING Founders of Art Miami (Nick & Pamela) are ambassadors and donate a booth to UNLEASHED, this was our third consecutive year showcasing at the fair. From the past few years we have learned a lot, especially how to “engage” with this international art crowd. UNLEASHED is the *only* non-gallery booth in the entire fair. This year we wanted to really laser focus on Connecting Thread + Unleashing India while creating a fun and interactive experience for attendees. We have a small and mighty team, and are all pretty “crafty” and like to be creative/ work with our hands. Team UNLEASHED loves the concept of DIY (Do It Yourself), and we came across some cool inspirations on pinterest. Since we are focused on helping female craft artisans around the world, we created a 8 foot world map handmade of nail heads and white thread. It took us a few weeks to make this back in our NYC studio. Our booth consisted of two 16 foot walls with four major elements inside of the space.
One wall was completely digital, thanks to our amazing technology sponsor SAMSUNG. We used 5 SAMSUNG Framed TVS (they literally look like framed gallery paintings) and created a digital slide-show with imagery from our recent trip to India. All of the photos were snapped by photographer Olivia Fougeirol. On one TV we had our official CONNECTING THREAD: UNLEASHING INDIA sizzle real which was shot by Oscar nominated director Amy Berg. We are SO EXCITED to announce that our original content series CONNECTING THREAD consisting of 6 episodes being shot around the world, will live on Refinery 29 in 2018. Underneath the technology we have a cool gold water spout leaking a “bindi crochet” mermaid tail by Brooklyn based artist Made by London. She is very well known for her crochet pieces around New York City & LA, and participated in our booth this year as a special collaboration.
On the main CONNECTING THREAD wall we have a 16ft cork board, 8 ft world map made of threads, and over 5,000 multi colored acrylic papers hung up by thumb tacks. We wanted to get attendees engaged and participating in our booth. We asked everyone that came by to pick any color paper they wanted from the wall and write their name + where they are from + what was the last thing they made with their hands. The answers were AMAZING!!! Some people wrote about food, others wrote about making art, the answers all varied and I really loved speaking with so many different people. This fair is universal, there are people who attend from ALL OVER THE WORLD. It was wonderful to engage with so many different cultures, some really awesome conversations, and new connections/friendships. DAMN I LOVE MY JOB!
The last element in our booth is a stunning lace + metal mesh gown, which is a one of a kind couture collaboration between UNLEASHED and Morphew. They are a vintage company that finds one of a kind pieces and reworks them to become modern day works of art. The gown has gold and silver circle bindi patches that were hand beaded by our female artisans in rural India. It is such a beautiful piece of art, and has been drawing some great attention to our booth. I really feel like this has been our very best year yet! We are going to bring back everyone’s answers to our studio in NYC and make something super cool out of the responses, so stay tuned!
In the meantime, if you wanted to learn more details about UNLEASHED please visit our website www.Unleashed-World.com xo
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