David Castillo

>Placeholder Future< is on view through October 1, 2026.

Mayer has spent over a decade examining the possibilities and probabilities of the future, and our ongoing relationship with technology—the way we might physically integrate with it, its potential to liberate the self from utilitarian concerns. Her investigations have revealed that the future, though, never quite arrives; as technology outpaces itself, revolutionary tools becoming artifacts overnight and new advancements threaten to deplete our resources, the need for adaptation continues. Perhaps the future is better understood as an ever-present container for the imagination.

Installation view of >Placeholder Future< at David Castillo Gallery, 2026.

Sanford Biggers, ‘Haute Mess’, 2014 is on view Studio Museum in Harlem through February 28, 2027

This exhibition brings together a selection of works from a historic gift to the Studio Museum in Harlem by Peggy Cooper Cafritz (1947–2018) to celebrate her legacy as an advocate for the arts and her lifelong commitment to artists and their practices. An arts patron, educator, and civil rights activist, Cafritz bequeathed the majority of her art collection to the Studio Museum and the Duke Ellington School of the Arts, a public school in Washington, DC, which she cofounded in 1974. Cafritz acquired “Haute Mess” from David Castillo’s 2014 exhibition “Amerika”.

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Cafritz described one aspect of her approach to collecting as a “relentless search for beauty,” which “has always been, in part, a political act.” Her bequest to the Museum included over four hundred works by more than two hundred artists of African descent.

Image: Sanford Biggers, Haute Mess, 2014

Belkis Ayón Estate in Museu de Arte de São Paulo “Latin American Histories,” curated by Amanda Carneiro and Julieta González.

This international exhibition occupies five floors of the Pietro Maria Bardi building at MASP. Organized into five sections, the exhibition will investigate how the idea of Latin America was created and contested over time and is accompanied by a major publication.

Image: Belkis Ayón, “Ya Estamos Aquí,” 1994, collagraph on Damuji paper, 72-1/2 x 86-1/2 inches.

Join us for the opening reception of two exhibitions: Jillian Mayer ‘Placeholder Future’ and Adler Guerrier “Small Oscillations among Ordinary Forms” 🗓️ Thursday, September 3, 6 - 9 PM

Jillian Mayer is an artist and filmmaker. Through, videos, sculptures, online experiences, photography, performances, and installations, Mayer explores how technology affects our lives, bodies, and identities by processing how our physical world and bodies are impacted and reshaped by our participation in a digital landscape. Mayer investigates the points of tension between our online and physical worlds and makes work that attempts to inhabit the increasingly porous boundary between the two. Mayer’s artwork has a consistent thread of modeling how to subvert capital-driven modes of technological innovation. Solo exhibitions include Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha, Nebraska (2019), Kunst Aarhus, Aarhus, Denmark (2019), Tufts University, Boston, MA (2018); Pérez Art Museum, Miami, FL (2016); and LAXART, Los Angeles, CA (2016). She has exhibited, screened films, and performed at MoMA PS1 (2017); MoMA (2013); the Bass Museum of Art, North Miami, FL (2012); the Guggenheim Museum (2010); and the Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montréal, Québec as a part of the Montréal Biennial (2014). Mayer is a recipient of the Creative Capital Fellowship, South Florida Cultural Consortium Visual/Media Artists Fellowship, Cintas Foundation Fellowship for Cuban Artists, and was named one of the “25 New Faces of Independent Film” by Filmmaker magazine. She has lectured at The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, CalArts, the Sundance Institute, ICA Miami, Carnegie Mellon University and more. Mayer’s films have screened at festivals including Sundance, SXSW, Rottenberg Film Fest, and the New York Film Festival. Mayer is represented by David Castillo in Miami, FL.

🗓️Thursday, September 3, 2026
📍25 Ne 39th St, Miami FL, 33137

Image: Still from Jillian Mayer, How to Disappear, 2026

Join us for the opening reception of two exhibitions: Jillian Mayer ‘Placeholder Future’ and Adler Guerrier “Small Oscillations among Ordinary Forms” 🗓️ Thursday, September 3, 6 - 9 PM

Adler Guerrier is a Haitian-born art

‘The Majesty of the Elemental’ is on view through August 29, 2026

Studio Lenca Historiantes comes from a monumental tradition in its own right: the ceremonial masked dances of rural El Salvador, the artist’s homeland. Displaced during the Salvadoran Civil War and a dancer himself,
Studio Lenca, born Jose Campos, was drawn to the Historiantes’ movement, their ability to embody and reenact history, and the insight they offer into his place of origin. He poses as and paints the Historiantes, the word itself a portmanteau of “history” and “student”; some works are housed in ornate, European frames,
painted over, the portraits spilling into them. It’s an attempt, he explained in an interview with Talking With Creatives, “to think about how messy history actually is.”

Belkis Ayón Estate ‘Myth and Disobedience’ is on
view MALBA through October 12, 2026

Created between 1991 and 1998, the works presented here belong to a pivotal period in Ayón’s practice, marked by the recurring presence of Sikán, the central figure in the Abakuá foundation myth, whom the artist
reinterpreted in order to challenge the patriarchal structure of the brotherhood. Ayón sought to give visual form to a ritual tradition that had previously lacked pictorial representation, as the Abakuá myth had been
transmitted exclusively through oral tradition.

Top image: Ayón Estate, La Cena , 1993.



‘The Majesty of the Elemental’ is on view

Sanford Biggers’ ‘Lo-Phi’ is on view as part of his solo show ‘Drift’ Parrish Art Museum featuring new textile works, prints, sculptures, and site responsive installations.

Biggers describes his practice as emerging from an aggregate process of “transposing, combining, and juxtaposing ideas, forms, and genres that challenge traditional historiography.”

On view through September 3, 2026

Installation view of Sanford Biggers: Drift at the Parrish Art Museum, Water Mill, NY (May 17–September 13, 2026). Photo: Jenny Gorman.

Pepe Mar & Lyle Ashton Harris in Turn the volume up! Nasher Museum examines how artists, activists, and everyday people have used their voices to challenge injustice, build communities, and shape public life, inviting visitors to consider how we might do the same. Open during the United States’ 250th anniversary, the exhibition situates these stories within the broader history of American democracy, highlighting how speaking out, documenting events, organizing movements, and creating art can galvanize collective action. On view August 27, 2026 – July 11, 2027. Turn the volume up! is organized by Xuxa Rodríguez, PhD, Patsy R. and Raymond D. Nasher Curator of Contemporary Art, with support from Julianne Miao, Curatorial Associate. Featured Artists

Carrie Mae Weems, Ode to Affirmative Action, 1989
Juan Abreu, Francis Alÿs, Holly Bass, Chuck Close, Robert Colescott, Luis Cruz Azaceta, Jamal Cyrus, Bruce Davidson, Karla Diaz, Sam Durant, Jordan Eagles, Tom Farris, Bill Fick, Laura Fields, Leonard Freed, Juan Genovés, Ralph Gibson, Guerrilla Girls, Lyle Ashton Harris, Ken Heyman, Thomas Hirschhorn, Reggie Burrows Hodges, Vitaly Komar, Alexander Kosolapov, Dapper Bruce Lafitte, Pedro Lasch, Pepe Mar, Mary Ellen Mark, Spider Martin, Paul Pfeiffer, Marielle Plaisir, John Rhoden, Larry Rivers, Dario Robleto, Milton Rogovin, Sheldon Scott, Leonid Sokov, Lou Stoumen, Carol Summers, Mark di Suvero, Barthélémy Toguo, Carlos Vega, Kara Walker, Carrie Mae Weems, Peter Williams, Purvis Young, and Ross Bleckner, Louise Bourgeois, Mike Kelley, Simon Leung, Lorna Simpson, Kiki Smith, and Nancy Spero for ACT UP. Image: Pepe Mar, Green Spiral, 2025, collage & mixed media on wood panel in artist’s laminate frame. Collection Stefanie & Doug Kahn, Raleigh, NC.

‘The Majesty of the Elemental’ is on view through August 29, 2026

Biggers’s work has consistently synthesized the past, present, and future, challenging the linearity of history—he is a syncretic artist, drawing on Americana, Buddhism, music, and talismanic magic. He’s used the term “future ethnography” to describe what his artwork constitutes—its atemporality, its undecipherable origins. His quilt-based pieces reference the long history of textiles in this country, particularly in African American communities—for storytelling, cultural preservation, utility—while his ceramic sculptures, including Double Braid (2025), on view here, recall the place where he deepened the practice (Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico) and the tradition itself, which dates back to antiquity.
Double Braid, shaped like a rippling helix, belongs to the lineage of ceramics, though it’s uniquely the artist’s.

Image: Sanford Biggers, Double Braid, 2025

‘The Majesty of the Elemental’ is on view through August 29, 2026

Studio Lenca’s Historiantes comes from a monumental tradition in its own right: the ceremonial masked dances of rural El Salvador, the artist’s homeland. Displaced during the Salvadoran Civil War and a dancer himself, Studio Lenca, born Jose Campos, was drawn to the Historiantes’ movement, their ability to embody and reenact history, and the insight they offer into his place of origin.

Pepe Mar responds to the ongoing erasure of q***r histories, continually evoking them in his microcosmic installations—particularly through Paprika, his alter-ego and a genderless creature of science fiction who represents all those who exist outside the mainstream. Mar is, in effect, a mythologist: Paprika might come from the past or the future or both, but they are omnipresent, often displayed alongside Mar’s homages to real-life q***r icons, like the drag artist Varla. Through Paprika, Mar iterates and expands the canon of q***r art.

Image: Installation View of ‘The Majesty of the Elemental’ at David Castillo