Art Basel Miami Beach: Nihura Montiel & Melvino Garretti

For Art Basel Miami Beach, Sebastian Gladstone Gallery will present a two-person exhibition of Nihura Montiel and Melvino Garretti centered on the vessel as body and container. Garretti’s exuberant ceramic sculptures, shaped by Studio Watts and the improvisational rhythms of Leimert Park’s jazz culture, transform teapot-like forms into ecstatic, polymorphic structures charged with diasporic memory. Montiel’s paintings of vases, mirrors, and teapots operate as stand-ins for the human figure, subtly addressing race, gender, and class through surface and form. Together, they position the vessel as a site of interiority, identity, and cultural resonance.