Professor Devan Shimoyama‘s large-scale installation “The Grove” is included in Art Basel Miami Beach’s Meridians section, which centers monumental works of significant importance. In addition, Shimoyama’s work will be on view in Kavi Gupta’s booth at Art Basel Miami Beach and in DeBuck Gallery’s booth at Untitled art fair. Art Basel Miami Beach is on view December 1 through 3 and Untitled is on view November 29 through December 3.
Making its first public appearance since its debut in the Smithsonian Institution’s “Futures” exhibition in Washington DC, “The Grove” depicts the phenomenon of pairs of shoes tied at the laces, dangling from telephone wires. Such a sight is usually presumed to be an indication of gang territory or violence, unavoidably calling our attention to the people who once wore the shoes. However, shoes dangling from wires don’t always indicate criminality; they are sometimes evidence of a celebration, or innocent moments of play. Shimoyama’s bedazzled monument features shoes covered in crystals, suspended from the interconnected wires of rhinestone-encrusted telephone poles. Glistening with kinetic energy and light, “The Grove” suggests a possibility for transformation within a dreamspace of remembrance, where the coexistence of presence and absence, and beauty and pain, is essential to the memories we construct and the history we co-create.