RICE HOTEL
FARED MANZUR
INTERVIEW BY GRACE SPARAPANI
PHOTOGRAPHY: SAM HAYES
PRODUCTION: LARA COPPOLA-ESTEFAN
OUT NOW
ISSUE 43 FW23
KALEIDOSCOPE's Fall/Winter 2023 issue launches with a set of six covers. Featuring Sampha, Alex Katz, Harmony Korine, a report into the metamorphosis of denim, a photo reportage by Dexter Navy, and a limited-edition cover by Isa Genzken.
Also featured in this issue: London-based band Bar Italia (photography by Jessica Madavo and interview by Conor McTernan), the archives of Hysteric Glamour (photography by Lorenzo Dalbosco and interview by Akio Kunisawa), Japanese underground illustrator Yoshitaka Amano (words by Alex Shulan), Marseille-based artist Sara Sadik (photography by Nicolas Poillot and interview by Daria Miricola), a survey about Japan’s new hip-hop scene starring Tohji (photography by Taito Itateyama and words by Ashley Ogawa Clarke), Richard Prince’s new book “The Entertainers” (words by Brad Phillips), “New Art: London” (featuring Adam Farah-Saad, Lenard Giller, Charlie Osborne, R.I.P. Germain, and Olukemi Ljiadu photographed by Bolade Banjo and interviewed by Ben Broome).
FROM THE CURRENT ISSUE
ESCAPE TO MIAMI
The most southernly city in the US, Miami exists in the tropical recesses of the American imagination: land of celebrity, thunderstorms, Tony Montana, and Art Deco architecture. Here, we meet the latest generation of Miamians—committed radicals in the fields of art, fashion, and music, who are dreaming up new narratives for the city they call home.
NEW ART: LONDON
The art world’s compulsion to categorize by the yardstick of “hot or not” has historically been the driving force behind the market and the gallery system. Commerce is intertwined with this metric, spurred on by the insatiable appetite to find talented young things to build up. This system is uninteresting: what’s in vogue rarely reflects those operating at the cutting edge. Who are those young emerging artists making work against all odds—work that is difficult and costly to make, store, exhibit, move, and sell? These five individuals typify this path. Working across video, sound, installation, and sculpture, they march onwards, carving out their own niche—exhibiting in empty shop spaces one day and major institutions the next. For them, making is guided by urgency, and persistence is motivated by blind faith.
SARA SADIK
KALEIDOSCOPE hosted a solo exhibition by Marseille-based artist Sara Sadik (b. 1994, Bordeaux), in November 2023 at Spazio Maiocchi in Milan, with the support of Slam Jam. Inspired by videogames, anime, science fiction, and French rap, Sara Sadik’s work explores the reality and fantasies of France’s Maghrebi youth, addressing issues of adolescence, masculinity, and social mythologies. Her work across video, performance, and installation often centers on male characters, using computer-generated scenarios to transform their condition of marginalization into something optimistic and poetic.
FROM THE SHOP
FROM THE ARCHIVE
MANIFESTO
In 2023, from June 22 to June 24 during Men’s Fashion Week in Paris, KALEIDOSCOPE and GOAT presented the new edition of our annual arts and culture festival, MANIFESTO. Against the unique setting of the French Communist Party building, a modern architectural landmark designed by legendary Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer, the festival will bring together visionary creators from different areas of culture across three days of art, fashion and sound. The 2024 edition will run from June 21 to June 23.
CAPSULE PLAZA
In April 2023, a year after the launch of the magazine, Capsule introduced Capsule Plaza, a new initiative that infuses new energy into Milan Design Week by redefining the design showcase format. A hybrid between a fair and a collective exhibition, Capsule Plaza brings together designers and companies from various creative fields, bridging industry and culture with a bold curation that spans interiors and architecture, beauty and technology, ecology and craft. The 2024 edition will run from April 15 to April 21.
Built in 1905 and left uninhabited for decades, artist Fared Manzur has turned Rice Hotel in Downtown Miami into a studio space for himself, and a gallery of sorts. Here, leaving the architecture of the space largely untouched and bare, he welcomes artists from across the world to work, exhibit, and experience the city.
GRACE SPARAPANI
Rice Hotel was vacant for about 40 to 50 years before you started inhabiting it.
FARED MANZUR
Yes. Essentially the first work was making it habitable: I put the floor down, installed electricity and cooling. But dimension-wise, it’s 100 feet by 100 feet, has a balcony that’s 100 by 10 feet, and then you have 40-foot rooms on the east side, a 10-foot wide main hall, and then 40-foot rooms on the west side. Initially, I set up a few rooms for use, and now I use all the rooms for different things. I now have a dedicated room for the visitors, and that’s where “visitors,” whether it’s a gallery or artist, usually show.
GS
So it’s a mixture of a studio space, work, and a gallery, right? Like you’re showing things. You are inviting other galleries, other artists, to show, but then you’re also working in this space, and then you also said that kind of the first works that happened in the space were actually on the space itself. And you gave me the dimensions of the hotel, right, as if you were giving me the dimensions of the work, and the rooms have titles. So do you conceptualize it as all of these different things? Is there one thing that kind of takes precedence, or is it kind of an amalgam of everything?
FM
It’s something that gets blurred. It does have the title of “Rice Hotel,” but it is my working stu- dio. Miami has a different pace, so I think by making an effort to stay here and do things here, you’re bringing something. You’re keeping it here versus leaving for New York or LA.
GS
Can you tell me about some of your work?
FM
There is a two-part work. It’s titled there there 10.4, a panel being ten feet, another one being four feet. And it’s about one thing happening in two places. A room is titled Lobby. And another one is main hall, so by terms that are self-dictated, you say this is two different places, but, in “reality,” are you not in one place?
These panels are both painted with yellow enamel; when these works get painted, I usually put myself up high on a ladder depending on the angle that is necessary. And I basically fill the entire room with paint and then wait for it to settle. That is what creates an even coat.
Then there is threshold, a series of four glass works, each consisting of two glass panels that are set in an aluminum U-channel. And in each pairing, one panel is heat-treated. When glass is heat-treated, it becomes stronger. And I made this because, when I started heat-treating the glass I worked with, I had a moment where I thought, do I now have to treat the glass differently? Does the process change now because it is stronger? Do you treat something differently now that you know it’s stronger? Or do you continue with the same methods? And I think it’s about not knowing what anyone else is going through at any point in time.
GS
I’m really curious about how the space has impacted your practice, and if you can see kind of a bifurcation in your work, before moving in to the hotel versus after moving in to the hotel.
FM
A question that usually comes across is how the works work in the space because of the coloration. I was using this materiality prior to being in the space. It just so happens that the space has been through ... How do I word this? It’s allowed itself to fade, right?
And that’s more of a literal sense, to answer your question, so there is that crossover. But also, this is where I think about the work. This is where the work gets made. So certainly, even down to dimensions and what can move inside here, it definitely influences the work.
So, in particular, there is a green panel called Center Hall, and, behind it, there’s a 40-foot hallway. The work is intentionally placed inset in the hall so that it flattens the wall. And the reason why I referenced this work is because this work in particular, here is because it lives like this, but once it leaves this space, it will just be a structure on a wall. It won’t be inset anywhere. And I have that very particular intention that it’s about the memory of it being here like this and something else somewhere else.
GS
I love that word “memory” there, because I was thinking about the tension between making works that are, on one hand, so site-specific to the Rice Hotel, and, on the other hand, have this futurity of being able to live somewhere else. And often when we think of site-specific works, we think of them not being able to be replicated anywhere. So I really enjoy that you’re taking the site specificity as a memory as opposed to a limitation. Which also kind of leads me to another question that I had: Do you feel like the memories of the building, the memories of it as a hotel and being vacant for 40, 50 years, kind of haunt your work or show up in any particular ways?
FM
I think there’s a meeting of emptiness. So I think this space being quote-unquote “empty” and left to be, it’s sort of like it had time to concentrate. It had time to concentrate on being just what it’s supposed to be without that human interaction. It’s almost like the space got to do what it wanted to do instead of having all these social pressures through time. It just got to just be, and, when I came here, I respected that: I didn’t want to do too much to the space. I didn’t paint all the walls. I did just enough to be here.
And I think that there was an introduction, there was a settling in when I first came here. And I think there was a moment when the building almost accepted me as the person that’s going to be here.
GS
I noticed on your website that the main component is a video called In Case of Care, and I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about care in relation to your relationship with the Rice Hotel.
FM
I’m in the studio, I’m an inhabitant. So it’s like: At what point do you become part of the building? I have a work titled dweller, and it’s in reference to the termites that live in the building, which have become part of the building.
GS
It’s interesting that it’s named after the termites, they become dwellers through destruction. That kind of interplay between symbiosis and antagonism also makes me wonder about your relationship to the art world and the art market. It’s quite interesting that you have set up a situation for yourself in which you’re able to circumvent the need that most artists have for traditional gallery representation by being able to exhibit in your own studio and offer the same opportunity to other artists.
FM
I’ve shown with other galleries outside of my studio. But here, I have the opportunity to make the work in the space and then install it in the same space. There is a continuation within the dimensions of the space. Also, I’ve seen it with the young kids that have come since they were teenagers and now they’re in their mid-20s; they realize that you can build from here and, in time, create your own language. And years later, they’re asking very particular questions because they know that everything may mean something. I get to do exactly what I want to do or at least be as honest as possible.
GS
When did you start to inhabit this space?
FM
I’m going into my seventh year.
GS
What’s next? What’s the future of your practice? And what do you think is the future of Miami art in general?
FM
Yeah, I don’t know. A lot of my work is moment-based. But the future, you could only believe that there will be a continuation of people who continue to believe in the city, because I believe in my city, which is why I’m here. I mean, if I don’t, who’s going to believe in it?
Located in Downtown Miami, Rice Hotel is an historical structure over 100 years old, recently converted into a gallery and studio by the local artist Fared Manzur.
Grace Sparapani is a Texas-based writer, researcher, and KALEIDOSCOPE’s line editor.