Illuminate Coral Gables, a project to add more outdoor beauty and art to the Florida city, has launched with a series of light-up displays in the downtown area.
The initiative consists of ten projects spread across a three-block radius surrounding Coral Gables’ famed Miracle Mile. The installments were selected by chief curator Lance M. Fung and others from submissions by both local and international artists. Joseph Clayton Mills’ project The Passage, located in two storefront windows on the Mile, uses video screens to portray glimpses into the city’s multicultural past. Jonathan Perez, in collaboration with his students at Florida International University, created his work You Are Here by projecting historic video footage onto the east wall of the Coral Gables Museum.
Illuminate also incorporates Cai Guo-Qiang’s Fireflies project, which mounts a thousand handmade Chinese lanterns onto American-made pedicabs, and was first displayed in Philadelphia in 2017. Outdoor art nights like these, featuring novel use of technology and graphic design, have become popular in cities around the globe as a way to bring people into downtown areas and make art more accessible. Illuminate Coral Gables will also be running an educational component through FIU and Miami-Dade County Public Schools, with the hopes of expanding the event next year.
The Illuminate Coral Gables Exhibition will run until March 14 throughout the Miracle Mile area.
