For Miami Locals, Art And Reality Don’t Always Mix

“In my community, I live in Sunny Isles Beach, Basel hasn’t affected us at all. Art brings happiness. If you take art away, then you take away the creative side of your of brain. And your brain actually functions at 50 percent.”

“Art is art. People love it or people don’t like it. I stand in between. In my opinion, art has not affected change in the past. Think about it: Who is gonna go and paint ISIS right now? You know what I mean? It’s different times.”

“I think it’s a good festival. It’s good because you bring the art and culture to Miami. I’m an artist, a painter. We need art. We need art because we are living in a difficult moment in a difficult world. Art brings the beautiful things to our world.”

“If you believe in art, you believe in yourself. But if you ain’t got art in your life, then you don’t know nothing about life. Art brings life.”

“I don’t know what [Art Basel] is. A lot people here have no money. People are waking up with no money to eat. I want all these situations to change. I want everybody to have money, a job. If you don’t have money, you can’t do nothing for yourself.”

“I’ve heard of Art Basel, but I’ve never been. It hasn't affected our community. Most definitely art can still cause change. Just present it, just keep doing it. Don’t stop doing it. Art is culture, it’s everything. The drugs and all of the killings that’s going on with the young kids, that’s the number one things hurting our community.”

“Art Basel has brought in income, and a positive light to the community. I’d like to see more jobs available to minorities. I just want opportunity, equal opportunity for everyone.”

“Everything in this world is about art — music, pictures; it tells how the person’s emotions is. Basel has changed Miami a lot. But also you gotta look at the people and the human beings that’s inside the community. The community don’t change if the people don’t change, and then it’s always gonna be chaos. The main thing that’s affecting the community is the people that have envy. Mainly that black people don’t know how to come together, and everybody else being afraid because of the way a person look, whether it’s their hairstyle or because the person went to jail — they judge people. It’s really the judgement. When you judge somebody for how they look, it doesn’t mean that’s exactly how they is.”

“No, I don’t know Art Basel. But art is something for kids to do. It’s a way for kids to take they minds off the gun violence; the children would be able to be safer in they own community. It’s not safe around here.”

“Safety is one of the more important things right now. I don’t give a fuck about Trump. Everything depends on how you look at the situation. For me, he’s nothing.”

“In Little Haiti, we need unity. Before, it was all Haitian over here, but now you got Spanish folks, the black Americans, the white folks. We need everybody to get together, to make it better for the kids in the future.”

“The violence is terrible. They need to put the guns down and put bibles in their hands. Basel is wasting our taxpayer’s time.”

“We gotta stop killing each other. Crime. Selling drugs. All the bad things that cause people to lose they life. We gotta come together the best way we can — black, white, Haitian, Jamaican; it doesn’t matter what race it is. If we could all come together as one, we could be a better a community. We killing ourself. We not allowing ourself to do what we should do. We just settling for what a motherfucker giving us. So if we go out and fight, and want more out of life, then we’ll get more than what we getting right now.”