This year, the Miami New Media Festival celebrates its 20th anniversary with a special edition in the context of the 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia. It will be present at the “Personal Structures” exhibition organized by the European Cultural Centre (ECC) in Venice from April 20th until November 24th, 2024, in Palazzo Bembo (room G).
That’s why its curatorial theme recalls the Biennial’s “Foreigners Everywhere” theme through a unique selection of the most representative video artworks from the Festival’s twenty years of history. It includes works from Argentina, Aruba, Bolivia, Colombia, Cuba, Italia, México, Nigeria, Portugal, Venezuela, and the USA. This event is in addition to the traditional open call from July to September. The curators are Andreina Fuentes Angarita, Gerardo Zavarce and Milagros González.
The special guest is the Food of War collective, integrated by Hernán Barros, Omar Castañeda, and Andreina Fuentes Angarita, with the “Journey of Labels” project, an artistic action in various locations in Venice. It challenges conventional perceptions of migration, social status, and identity in a world perpetually in flux. It invites viewers to delve into a transformative journey where black men take on the roles of Gondoliers, rewriting the narrative of an iconic Venetian tradition. This activity is supported by Refugees Welcome Italy, an NGO that promotes the inclusion of refugees through foster care and mentoring.
This video performance underscores the multifaceted nature of immigration, transcending simplistic categorizations of “expat,” “immigrant,” “foreigners,” or “refugee.” Invites to reflect on the power of art to dismantle barriers and initiate dialogues about equality and social justice.
20 years of the MNMF
The Miami New Media Festival (MNMF) is a multimedia platform sponsored by Arts Connection Foundation (ACF) since 2006. However, its roots go back to the International Video Art Festival, created in 2004 in Venezuela by artists Asdrúbal Colmenárez and Adriana Barrios and by the cultural promoter and museologist Andreina Fuentes Angarita. The Emerging Art Foundation and the Technology, Art, and Media Foundation (FAE) initially supported this initiative. Today, the MNMF is based in Miami and has established itself as a space that promotes artistic creation by exploring new technologies, such as video art, animation, digital art, augmented reality, video mapping, and using devices such as drones.
With 20 years of experience, the MNMF has built an ecosystem of artistic production and promotion that has benefited more than 210 artists and creators from more than 15 countries, with a network of exhibitions in Latin America, the Caribbean, Europe, and Asia, including important cities such as Miami, Rome, Venice, Paris, Madrid, Barcelona, Amsterdam, Caracas, Maracaibo, Valencia, San Cristóbal, Mérida, Lima, Bogotá, Santo Domingo, Shanghai and Hong Kong.
The MNMF does not establish nationality or residency restrictions for artists. The festival has presented over 700 videos, installations, 3D digital art pieces, and performances. Furthermore, it has transcended conventional boundaries, promoting artistic experimentation with emerging digital applications such as Skype (2003), Facebook (2004), YouTube (2005), Twitter (2006), WhatsApp (2009), Instagram (2010), Snapchat (2011) and TikTok (2019).
Additionally, the MNMF positions itself as a promoter and defender of pressing global issues. These topics define our contemporaneity: each year promotes reflection on a different curatorial proposal, addressing a wide variety of arguments, from global warming, the construction of identities, media censorship, violence, and problems related to human mobility to the issues associated with individual and global well-being, health, solidarity, and the need for global healing.
Programming in Venice
April – June 2024
– Consuelo Méndez, La Vaguada (The Flood), 2005-2009
– David Palacios, Obi Nwaegbe, and Terso Gundu, Ge-le/Femicides, 2022
– Gastón Ugalde, Sal (Salt), 2012
– Jesús Hernández-Güero, Minutes of Hate Again Itself, 2014-2015
– Muu Blanco, Anti-War Sounds, 2023
– Nayarí Castillo, Tapirus Terrestres, 2008
– Nela Ochoa, Death by Water, 1995
– Rolando Peña, Make Oil Green, 2010
– Sandra Vivas, Crossing, 2020
July – September 2024
– Alydia Weber, E la Luge su Lenga, 2020
– Carola Bravo, Yield to Immigrants, 2023
– Claudia Robles-Angel, Zhong, 2017
– Cheryl Maeder, Simulacra, 2019
– David Fernandez Roche and Francis Muñoz, Distantes (Distant), 2020
– Kiyo Gutiérrez, Un muro que parte el cuerpo en dos (A Wall that Divides the Body in Two), 2018
– Leo Nuñez, Desilusiones Ópticas (Optical Dissapoint-mens), 2018
– Santiago Carlini, Komarov, 2016
– Carolina Camelo Jimenez, In La Kech Hala Ken, 2017
– Matteo Campula, Like a Rat in a Cage, 2020
October – Novembre 2024
– Selected artists Open Call 2024
Arts Connection Foundation (ACF) is a non-profit organization created in 2006 in Miami, which aims to be a platform to promote diverse and unique events that explore fundamental issues facing contemporary society. It offers an inclusive and collaborative space to provide the community with cultural knowledge, cultural awareness, and sensitivity.
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