Dance on the Sand Beneath a Giant Disco Ball: Inside Faena Art’s Miami Art Week 2026

Every Miami Art Week, Faena turns its corner of Miami Beach into one of the most anticipated stops of the week, and this year it’s thinking big. On the sand, a mirrored sphere the size of a small building will catch the sunlight and the crowd around it. Inside the Cathedral, a glowing crown of light will become a gathering place. Both commissions share one idea: art isn’t something to admire from a distance but somewhere to gather, listen, dance, and take part.

Photo Credit: Faena Miami Beach

A Lore Supreme by Christopher Joshua Benton

Partially buried in the sand of Faena Beach, Benton’s monumental sphere reimagines the disco ball as a map, an archive, and a meeting place. It stretches 44 feet across and rises 27 feet into the sky, and its more than 7,000 mirrored facets move with the wind, so the whole sculpture appears to spin, reflecting the beach, the sky, and everyone around it. The surface is a reimagined map of the countries that have shaped Miami’s culture, with the city’s connections to Africa, the Caribbean, and Latin America at its heart.

It’s also Benton’s first major installation in the United States, and it grew out of months of fieldwork in Miami’s music communities. The artist spent time with musicians, producers, DJs, and educators, tracing how diasporic communities shaped dance music across disco, dancehall, dembow, descarga, salsa, house, and techno. Speakers embedded in the sphere play a sound work built from local voices, so as visitors walk around it, they hear different fragments of conversation and music.

“Miami is one of those places where the city itself feels like a dance floor,” Benton says, describing a research process that took him from salsa at a pirate radio station to learning the güiro over a Cuban sandwich in Little Havana.

Island Funk House

The sphere comes alive through Island Funk House, an artist-curated public program that runs throughout the day. Expect morning wellness activities, an afternoon sound documentary, and live performances around sunset that pair local and international artists. The lineup includes Major Lazer, Richie Hell, DJ Le Spam, DJ Pressure Point, and PaperWater, with more performers to be announced. The sand itself becomes the dance floor.

An Expanded Baroque Crown by Marinella Senatore

Inside the Faena Cathedral, Italian artist Marinella Senatore is creating an inhabitable luminaria, a temporary architecture of light inspired by the public celebrations of Southern Italy. Shaped like an expanded Baroque crown, it’s a space visitors can walk into, move through, and make their own. The phrase “the word community feels good” will wrap around the crown’s perimeter, and the space will host readings, dance, poetry, and musical performances, including special programming with Miami’s O, Miami poetry organization.

Senatore, who was named Artist of the Year in 2026 by Rome’s Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, has created public works for the High Line, Millennium Park, and Palazzo Strozzi. “Participation is not only a way of working for me; it is a way of thinking,” she says.

The Magic Is You! by Kevin Arrow

Faena Art will also host a work by Kevin Arrow as part of the City of Miami Beach’s No Vacancy initiative, which places site-specific works by mostly local artists in 12 of Miami Beach’s iconic hotels. Installed in the atrium of Casa Faena, The Magic Is You! draws on Arrow’s personal archive of 35mm slides, collected over decades of living and working in Miami Beach. No Vacancy installations are on view November 12 through December 19, 2026.

For more of Haute Living’s Miami coverage, see The Most Exclusive Wellness Clubs and Spas in Miami and La Pecora Bianca Is Opening Its First Restaurant Outside NYC, and It’s in Coral Gables.