Miami Art Week 2025
The Art Week nobody could short and creativity is the real currency
by Lynn Miteva
Another Art Week… and Miami Has Never Been This Crowded
Miami Art Week has always been chaotic. But after 25 years of watching it, this year was unprecedented. The streets, galleries, hotels, and even sushi bars were packed shoulder to shoulder.
The city didn’t just host Art Week — it became a living, breathing marketplace of ideas, risk, and ambition.
The first thing to notice: PNC dominated, overtaking USB as the institutional anchor of the week. In art, as in finance, leadership isn’t given — it’s earned by showing conviction, influence, and a willingness to push the ecosystem forward.
Traditionally, the flow is predictable: beaches first, Wynwood next, Brickell quiet. This year Coral Gables erupted unexpectedly. Young artists, energetic collectors, and fresh exhibitions turned it into a hotspot overnight.
At the Coral Gables Museum, collectors walked through their acquisitions with surgical precision — why they chose these artists, why they became patrons.
Art was everywhere. Boldness was rewarded. Outrageousness counted.
Creativity is the only currency here.
We got literally dizzy from the sheer volume of work, but certain artists and pieces caught our eyes — compelling, sharp, and investment-worthy.
Here they are.
Ash Almonte
Butterflies That Lift the Senses
What makes Ash Almonte’s art so distinctive is her ability to blend raw emotion with refined craft, transforming everyday optimism into something tangible.
Her mixed-media butterflies are more than decorative—they feel alive, layered with resin, texture, and luminous color that shift with the light.
Each piece reflects her expressive approach, where abstract energy meets the grace of figurative form. Unlike many contemporary artists, Almonte brings influences from fashion and music into her studio process, infusing her work with rhythm and movement.
What sets Almonte apart in today’s art scene is how she translates that emotional and aesthetic vibrancy into highly collectible works that bridge fine art, interior design, and fashion.
Her creations have been showcased at West Chelsea Contemporary, Lilac Gallery NYC, and Gallery 725, and are featured in prestigious private collections, major motion pictures, and episodes of HGTV’s Bargain Mansions.
Rooted in boldness and beauty, Almonte’s art radiates with the same luminous optimism she lives by—an unmistakable hallmark of her growing influence in contemporary mixed media.
More of her work at ashalmonte.com
Ivana de Armas
Myth, Algorithm, and the Human Soul
Ivana leaves a lasting impression with work that fuses mythology, psychology, and contemporary life into intensely symbolic paintings.
Born in Serbia, she began her career at thirteen and later refined her practice in Belgrade before moving to the U.S., where her bold palette and narrative-driven art gained recognition, including her “Art of Belonging” series at Art Basel Miami 2019.
Her latest series confronts the tension between human instinct and technological control, using horses, centaurs, and hybrid divine beings as metaphors for freedom, illusion, and the cost of conformity.
In The Price of Illusion, hovering chessboards and winged horses guide viewers through a cosmic interplay of fate, power, and unseen forces.
Currency of the Soul examines the conflict between societal rewards and spiritual truth, where centaur-like figures balance money, validation, and the human heart amid a culture of imitation.
Final Algorithm turns mythological creatures into guardians of intuition and authenticity, questioning what remains of the human soul in a world obsessed with performance, attention, and digital influence.
Each painting demands contemplation, asking the viewer to look beyond the surface, confront illusions, and reclaim the ancient, intuitive wisdom that technology cannot measure or control.
More of her work at ivanadearmas.com
Lucía Szulman
Layers of Wonderland
Lucía was born in Buenos Aires and has explored music, gastronomy, history, ceramics, singing, jewelry making, carpentry, and even blacksmithing in the traditional master/apprentice style—experiences that shape her curiosity and meticulous approach to art.
Her works are extraordinary, hand-cut layered paper interpretations of Alice in Wonderland, built with more than ten meticulously crafted layers.
Each layer interacts with light to cast subtle shadows, creating depth, movement, and a sculptural presence that transforms the story into a tangible, three-dimensional world.
The uniqueness of her work lies in how the physical layering transforms a flat narrative into a three-dimensional space.
Shadows fall naturally between layers, altering perception and giving the story a sense of motion and temporal change.
The intricate cuts, often in limited color or monochrome, make the world of Wonderland paradoxical and immersive, reflecting Alice’s constant shifts in size, identity, and perspective.
Lucia turns paper into a sculptural medium that conveys narrative, illusion, and emotion simultaneously, making each piece a rare combination of technical mastery and conceptual sophistication.
More of her work at luciaszulman.com.ar
The Korean Connection
Among the artists that caught our attention were Sung Min Jang, Han Ho, and Michelle Chu, chosen by renowned curator Grace Yeonsook Ji, currently curator at One Art Space (Tribeca NYC), on the Seoul Han River Biennale committee, Director of Exhibitions at the International Multicultural Association, and Chair of the AKUS Korea-US Alliance Planning Committee.
Sung Min Jang
Threads of Memory
Sung creates work that is quietly radiant and deeply moving. In her series Thread of Memory, she explores how memory—fractured, layered, and often unspoken—can be reconstructed through art.
Painterly surfaces merge with textile motifs and symbolic threads, transforming moments of rupture into acts of repair.
Each piece has a delicate, whisper-like precision, with forms that feel stitched, woven, or mended, giving the work a layered depth.
Her art has a calming, restorative quality, blending vulnerability with resilience.
The subtle interplay of threads and textures makes each piece feel meditative and quietly uplifting, turning private histories into a universal experience of reflection and renewal.
More of her work at oneartspace.com
Han Ho
The Fourth Dimension and Eternal Light
Korean new media artist Han Ho creates experiences that feel suspended between the visible and the infinite. Drawing deeply from Korean Buddhism and the Nirvana Sutra, his work transforms light, reflection, and traditional hanji paper into a meditation on consciousness, impermanence, and liberation.
Surfaces shimmer, shadows fold, and time seems to stretch—space becomes a four-dimensional field where perception itself is fluid.
What sets Han Ho apart is his fusion of ancient craft with cutting-edge digital techniques. Hanji paper pierced with LED constellations carries both the texture of centuries-old tradition and the immediacy of modern technology.
More of her work at hanhoart.org
Hanho Art Center in Paju
NASA on “The 7 Million Project
Four Season Hanbat
Ethernal Light
Ethernal Light
Michelle Chu
Papyrus Reimagined
Michelle Chu creates large-scale works on papyrus using ancient traditional techniques, a material and method rarely seen in contemporary art. The texture, fragility, and natural irregularities of papyrus give her pieces a presence that feels both timeless and monumental.
Her careful layering and attention to scale transform the fragile sheets into expansive, almost architectural compositions, where every mark interacts with the material’s natural grain.
This combination of historical craft, physical scale, and precise execution makes her work immediately striking, bridging the past and present in a way that feels both deeply rooted and utterly contemporary.
Eri Yoshida
Quiet Japanese minimalism blending blue-and-white tradition with global luxury
At first glance, Eri's work seems deceptively simple: delicate blue lines on a white canvas. But the apparent minimalism conceals a deeper narrative. Each stroke varies in strength, shade, and spontaneity, capturing fleeting impressions from her inner world and giving the work a raw, personal immediacy that separates it from conventional minimalism.
What sets Eri apart is her treatment of negative space, or “ma”. Rather than leaving blank areas as voids, she transforms them into active participants, inviting viewers to project their own emotions and interpretations.
This approach echoes the Japanese aesthetic of “yohaku no bi”—the celebrated beauty of white space in ceramics, porcelain, and calligraphy—while embracing imperfection over polished perfection.
Eri’s work moves fluidly across disciplines. She creates fine art, live painting performances, editorial illustrations, and collaborations with luxury brands and media, including Hermès, Louis Vuitton, Fendi, Miu Miu, Ralph Lauren, Boucheron, Swarovski, Albion, Moët & Chandon, Matsuya Ginza, Daimaru Shinsaibashi, Tokyu Department Store, Tokyo Midtown, WWD Japan, Shueisha, Shogakukan, and Kodansha.
This cross-disciplinary approach allows her to bridge traditional Japanese aesthetics with contemporary global relevance, appealing to both collectors and luxury audiences.
Her compositions often reveal subtle storytelling within minimal gestures, rewarding repeated viewing and reflection. The rhythm of her lines, the balance of color, and the intentionality of blank space create works that feel alive, meditative, and deeply personal.
More of her work at queenmajesty-design.com
