A beloved Miami art space returns this month, opening on 30 November in Little River as Mitrani Art, a photography, film and video venue with exhibition galleries, a screening room and artists’ studios. It is a long-awaited new chapter for the Mitrani Warehouse, which sisters Dina and Rhonda Mitrani began out of their family’s longtime Wynwood clothing factory in 2002, watching the neighbourhood around them transform into a thriving arts district.
“We want to continue that same model that we had in Wynwood, creating a community with art studios and event spaces,” Dina tells The Art Newspaper. “We still want to welcome emerging and established artists to use it as a place to experiment and create new work.”
The inaugural exhibition is a group show of lens-based art titled ReExposures: The Magic Within. One expected highlight is Suddenly We Jumped by the Miami-based artist Antonia Wright. The video captures a live performance from 2013 in which the artist actually shattered a glass ceiling, dramatically jumping onto a pane of glass and falling to the floor below.
“Antonia makes really creative work and focuses on important social issues that need change,” Rhonda says. “This one is very impactful.”
Both Mitrani sisters left their native Miami for university, and found their way to New York after graduating.
The co-founders of Mitrani Art, Rhonda Mitrani (left) and Dina Mitrani (right) Courtesy Mitrani Art
Dina worked at Christie’s and then at two different galleries, including one specialising in Latin American photography. After having children, she decided to move home and open a photography gallery in her home city. Rhonda, who had a thriving film production career, was more reluctant to return.
“I had no intention of leaving New York,” she admits. “I ended up making a documentary film about my father going back to Cuba, and that brought me back to Miami to finish editing it. During one of those visits, Dina said, ‘Why don’t you stay here? There’s something going on in the art community.’”
At Mitrani Warehouse, the sisters started small, with art studios on the second floor, and gradually took over the building. Dina, who has a photography background, started a contemporary photography gallery, Dina Mitrani Gallery, and Rhonda opened the Screening Room, the first dedicated space in Miami for film-makers and video artists to show their work.
Tatiana Parcero, Actos de Fe #27, 2003 Courtesy the artist and Mitrani Art
But as the years passed, the sisters watched as artists and galleries slowly got priced out of the neighborhood. “We realised the Wynwood Art District was shifting. We held on for as long as we could, because we had an emotional attachment to that space where our parents had their business, our grandmother worked there, so many cousins, uncles,” Dina says. “But we realised it was time to go.”
When the Mitrani Warehouse closed in 2017, the sisters immediately began looking for a new location. In 2019, they purchased a mechanic shop in Little River with high ceilings and space to expand by building a separate studio facility. To design the new facility, they hired R&R Studios, a local multidisciplinary architecture firm run by Argentine artists Roberto Behar and Rosario Marquardt, who were longtime residents of the Mitrani Warehouse studios. The project took considerably longer than expected due to the pandemic, permitting and other roadblocks.
Marina Font, Untitled (celebration), 2014 Courtesy the artist and Mitrani Art
“It’s been seven years in the making, so we’re very excited to open. There’s a lot of anticipation,” Rhonda says.
The opening of Mitrani Art means a new permanent home for the Screening Room and Dina Mitrani Gallery, which have relied on pop-up programming across the city since the closing of the warehouse. The sisters have also started a new non-profit, Mitrani Art Projects Inc, that will run educational programmes in the space.
And artists are already moving into the new building, which has four studio spaces, each big enough for two artists. Rent is at the lower end of the market rate for the neighbourhood, the sisters say, and they hope to keep it that way by securing grant funding in the future.