Art Basel is here 20 years later, still pricey, gay and oh so WOKE, Miami! Yay! | Opinion

Happy 20th anniversary, Art Basel Miami Beach! With 282 galleries, you’re bigger than ever.

Your presence affirms that we haven’t all gone politically insane in Florida, turned into handmaids and commanders and banned you, too, from our subtropical Gilead.

The streets may be choked with more traffic. But, we’re breathing fresher air this week, thanks to the infusion of much-needed openness.

Art, at least, is still allowed to exist free-flowing, unscripted and irreverent — except in Coral Gables, where the mayor mislabeled two artists as communist sympathizers last summer, took away their public art commission, and never apologized for his wrongdoing. And where the area’s MAGA county commissioner is trying to quash a Dec. 9 book event.

But, perhaps, with the world’s millionaire and billionaire art collectors unfurling considerable amounts of dollars from their designer wallets, ever-vigilant natives will take a break from their censorship duties and let the rest of us enjoy Miami Art Week.

We need the temporary shelter from the bounty hunters of taboo books, plays and gayness, those mislabeled Moms for Liberty. And, I hope, we’ll be far from the bombastic white-supremacist picket lines of hateful Proud Boys.

Most of all, among art lovers, we’re not likely to run into Florida’s two homophobic senators, Marco Rubio and Rick Scott.

This week, they voted against codifying into law same-sex and interracial marriage. The bill was necessary to keep those rights safe from the conservative Supreme Court, and fortunately, it passed even without their support.

At several Basel galleries, a diverse group of queer artists is exhibiting work that pushes traditional definitions of sex, religion and death. Argentinean Carlos Herrera, for example, uses the Catholic iconography of his provincial hometown to explore his sexuality and identity.

Gayness is front and center here and mainstream, saying loudly in a state that staged a full-blown attack on LBGTQ+ people: Yes, please, say gay.

If you see these politicians or Florida’s rapacious ringleader, Gov. Ron DeSantis, at the Miami Beach Convention Center or at any of the many satellite art fairs, run!

READ MORE: Strong sales, giant eggs and the world’s nosiest ATM: Miami Art Week is back

Nothing good will come out of the interaction, only more restrictive fundamentalist Christian legislation to suppress whatever irks the governor’s voter base.

That crowd would happily seek to ban art like the mountain made of chocolate penises, the vaginas in different states of display and the Spanish orgy video I saw many Basels ago.

This year, the rage is artist Jamie McCartney’s world-traveling 26-foot sculpture “The Great Wall of Vulva” at the Wilzig Erotic Art Museum — 400 of them made from plaster casts belonging to volunteers, including transgender men and women.

READ MORE: There are 400 of them made of plaster. Miami Beach, behold ‘The Great Wall of Vulva’

Woke in Miami

During Art Week, we can escape the reach of DeSantis’ Anti-Woke Act and its attempts to white-wash history.

In Florida, where critical race theory has been banned from K-12 curricula, although it never really was there to begin with, the cultured “Conversations” segment at Art Basel featured the panel “Journeys across Diasporas: Collecting African Art.”

The subject of restitution, which sends many in this state running the other way, is of great interest these days as African nations are seeking to recover African artwork in European museums that was stolen during colonization.

Actress CCH Pounder (remember her in “X-Files,” “ER,” “The Shield”?), originally from Guyana, brought star power to the well-attended panel. She spoke about her collection of more than 500 works of art from the Caribbean and the African Diaspora.

From Basel proper to events like the “Art of Transformation” at The Arts and Recreation Center and Logan Building in Opa-locka on Nov. 30, the Black presence — and the rise of a wealthy Black class in Miami — has been in full view.

In another hot Miami topic, El apartamento, an independent gallery from Havana, has a space at the Untitled Art space on 12th Street and Ocean Drive.

Before the easily inflamed protest, please note the photograph on the gallery’s wall of imprisoned artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, one of the leaders of the San Isidro Movement that gave birth to the historic July 11, 2021, protests across the island.

The Faena Art space on the beach also has Cuba on its mind: A 150-foot light sculpture made from barricades is titled “Patria y Vida” after the viral protest anthem.

The work, by Cuban-American artists Antonia Wright and Rubén Millares, was inspired by Cuban protesters, but represents the struggles of “people around the world,” Wright said.

Inclusion, solidarity, the stuff that wins respect, allies, and causes. Bravo.

All that wokeness, Miami, is so good for us.

Art transforms

The southern tip of Florida was long overdue for the infusion of creativity, coloring outside the lines, and the restored experience of what true freedom is all about — certainly, not the government’s politically driven culture wars.

Nothing encapsulates free expression better than Miami Art Week.

Art Basel — and the myriad of satellite fairs — remind us that, before a celebrity president injected his poisonous mojo in the atmosphere and birthed his likeness in Tallahassee, this is who we were — cosmopolitan, proud of our diversity, open-minded.

Miamians had fought hard for gay rights and won. We lived, embraced, and let others do likewise. We prided ourselves on being people who don’t take injustice sitting down. We protested, sought minority alliances and, together, turned South Florida into a desirable destination.

It was to this evolved Miami that Art Basel came and, finding the right fit, stayed.

We’ve had the art world at our feet every year since 2002. Now there’s concern in the Miami cultural scene that meddlesome politicians and financial pressures could turn us into a fading star on the arts map.

Please stay forever, art lovers. Miami needs the transformational power of art more than ever.

Don’t let censors win.