At Miami's Art Basel fair, elephants and a buried ship are bringing out the locals
December 5, 2024
By Greg Allen
Artist Nicholas Galanin's piece Seletega recalls Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortes, who ordered his ships sunk after landing in Mexico in the early 1500s.
MIAMI BEACH, Fla. — Collectors, gallery owners and art aficionados from around the world are here this week for Art Basel. It's an annual event that's grown each year, spawning satellite fairs, exhibitions, parties and networking.
But there are also public art installations that often draw crowds. This year, a couple are right on the beach.
Rising from the sand next to the Faena hotel is what appears to be the sails of a buried Spanish galleon. The artist who created it, Nicholas Galanin is Tlingit and Unangax from Sitka, Alaska. He grew up in a native community where traditional arts like wood-carving and jewelry-making are treasured.
His great-grandfather was a totem carver. His father was a jeweler and a musician. His uncle, another mentor and artist, was a totem carver, canoe maker and jeweler. "I've been immersed from a young age," Galanin says. "I was essentially born into the arts."
Galanin's art blends traditional techniques like jewelry-making and wood carving with sculpture, photography and multimedia effects. It's taken him worldwide with a solo show in New York's Peter Blum gallery, exhibitions in Australia, Italy and an upcoming public art event in the United Arab Emirates.
But it's important for him to stay connected with his community in Alaska. "I'm trained as a carver in my community. I've led dugout canoe projects. We recently raised a 27-foot totem pole, Kooteeyaa we call it, in Juneau," he says.
"I've been immersed from a young age," Galanin says. "I was essentially born into the arts."
Galanin says his totem was carved in response to a statue that had been unveiled at the state capitol in Juneau. It commemorated William Seward, the secretary of state who negotiated Russia's sale of Alaska to the U.S.
Galanin says the sale, which greatly expanded the size of the U.S., was done without any consideration for the native people who lived there. "A lot of my work," he says, "investigates land and history and indigenous sovereignty, indigenous rights, language."
On Miami Beach, Galanin's piece, commissioned by Faena Art, recalls Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortes who ordered his ships sunk after landing in Mexico in the early 1500s. The hull of the ship appears buried in the sand. Twin masts, 40-feet-high tower over the beach. He says, the sight of the Spanish sails "were the first thing that were documented and…passed on to our community that were seen from the horizon."
The Spanish conquest of Mexico and other parts of the New World had a profound impact on Indigenous peoples. On Galanin's sails, the writing is in Spanish and English. "What are we going to give up to burn the sails of empire? What are we going to build for our collective liberation?" Galanin says his installation is intended to raise questions about colonialism, the environment and the role we have in shaping the future.