Let Me Know When You Land
Hypeart x Samsung Exhibition Ft. Eri Wakiyama (2023)
During Miami Art Week 2023, New York-based artist Eri Wakiyama debuted a collection of mystical artworks in a showcase I curated, managed media for, and oversaw the installation of. In partnership with Samsung Galaxy, the exhibition, Let Me Know When You Land, was held at HUB Miami in the city’s Little Haiti neighborhood. This immersive gallery experience, open to the public from December 8 through 9, merged art and technology, featuring a series of original artworks by Wakiyama alongside one-of-a-kind, hand-painted accessories paired with Samsung Galaxy devices.
Wakiyama’s curious, brooding portraiture adorned the industrial walls of HUB Miami, a multi-purpose event space transformed by custom-built installs inspired by extraterrestrial materials and galactic environments. Let Me Know When You Land centered around Galaxy, Existentialism, and A Bright Future, a concept exploring how not-so-close realities provoke the subconscious. As part of this celestial journey, futuristic glass domes displaying hand-painted Samsung Galaxy device accessories, including Z Flip5, Buds2 Pro and S23 Ultra, were presented alongside Wakiyama’s artworks. The devices were thematically reworked with sculptural moldings and abstract illustrations, propped atop crushed beads and stones and a white base illuminated by lights. Throughout the gallery walkthrough, canvas pieces depicted Wakiyama’s eerie characters scuba diving in space, delicately treading Earth’s surface and bathing in the Milky Way — otherworldly adventures demonstrating the artist’s mastery of color, storytelling and material.
Since HUB Miami is near Wynwood and the Design District, attendees were minutes away from vibrant murals and local street markets home to Miami, able to soak up the latest and greatest in contemporary art. Let Me Know When You Land explored how art and technology are becoming more intertwined, transcending how people experience and interpret ordinary life. Samsung Galaxy devices were the perfect canvases to reflect space-bound musings and interior dialogues that buffer in eternal orbit, all the more poetic through Wakiyama’s distinct vision.
