Deep Dive

The Art of Experiential: Our Take on Miami Art Week 2023

Miami Art Week is a wrap. The XP Land team spent a few days immersed in art — from iconic works, like Art Basel’s showing of Ai Weiwei’s massive Washington Crossing the Delaware constructed totally in Legos, to a video installation by the artist Oliver Beer, which presented two women slapping each other’s faces in a percussive beat. (ASMR, anyone?) We were struck throughout the week by the media’s take on the events. There were party recaps, sure, and celebrity sightings, but also think pieces that baffled us. One commented that much of the art had a “foreboding” quality to it (I mean, have you read your Apple News lately?). Another lamented the lack of a viral artwork while calling out the experiential qualities of a claw machine titled Fantasy World that invited passersby to drop in a quarter and try to win a prize. Something we've seen at every beauty pop-up and experiential trade booth (or ’80s-nostalgia arcades, for that matter) for a while now. For us, Art Week proved a capstone to what we at XP Land are calling 2023’s Return to Experiential. The themes that stood out point to a promising 2024 for anyone in the industry...