9 June 5–11, 2025 miaminewtimes.com | browardpalmbeach.com NEW TIMES | CONTENTS | LETTERS | NEWS | NIGHT+DAY | CULTURE | CAFE | MUSIC | Sunday, at Gramps, 176 NW 24th St., Miami; 305-699-2669; gramps.com. Tickets cost $18.94 via eventbrite.com. Sophia Medina ▼ MIAMI GARDENS KEEP YOU POSTED You could never accuse Post Malone of being subtle. The rapper-turned-pop-turned- country star is headed to Hard Rock Stadium as part of his aptly named Big Ass Stadium Tour Sunday night, and he’s bringing country stars Jelly Roll and Wyatt Flores along with him. It’s certainly the Grammy Award-winning artist’s most ambitious tour to date, but Posty will surely cultivate a laid-back atmosphere as you head back into the work week. 6:30 p.m. Sunday, at Hard Rock Stadium, 347 Don Shula Dr., Miami Gardens; 305-943-8000; hardrockstadium.com. Tickets cost $54 to $408 via ticketmaster.com. Caroline Val ▼ DOWNTOWN MIAMI WHAT’S THE TEA? Celebrate Pride Month at the Adrienne Arsht Center’s CommuniTea Dance, a free event that’s all about community, creativity, and connection. Headliner Vincint will light up the stage with his powerful vocals and dynamic pop hits, DJ Musicat will set the mood with the night’s soundtrack, and FayWhat?! will host the festivities. You’ll also catch stunning drag performances and have the chance to explore the Pride Marketplace, showcasing local artisans and organizations. 4 p.m. Sunday, at the Adrienne Arsht Center, 1300 Biscayne Blvd., Miami; 305-949-6722. Admission is free with RSVP via arshtcenter. org. Ashley-Anna Aboreden MON 6/9 ▼ FORT LAUDERDALE FLORIDA BOYS Ska-punk fans, American band Less Than Jake is coming to Revolution Live, and it’s bringing a whole gang along. For its Summer Circus tour, the band is inviting fellow ska band veterans Fishbone and the Suicide Machines, along with the newer ska band, Bite Me Bambi. Less Than Jake first formed in 1992 in Gainesville, Florida, gaining a following with the release of its late-’90s studio albums, Losing Streak and Hello Rockview. But the band’s breakthrough came with 2003’s Anthem, its most commercially successful album. The band’s most popular tracks include “All My Best Friends Are Metalheads,” “The Science of Selling Yourself Short,” “Johnny Quest Thinks We’re Sellouts,” and “History of a Boring Town.” 6 p.m. Monday, at Revolution Live, 100 SW Third Ave., Fort Lauderdale; 954-449-1025; jointherevolution. net. Tickets cost $44 via ticketmaster.com. Sophia Medina TUE 6/10 ▼ DOWNTOWN MIAMI GO HARD Rap superstar Lil Baby is bringing his electrifying W.H.A.M. World Tour to the Kaseya Center on Tuesday night. The arena tour is named after his fourth studio album, W.H.A.M. (Who Hard As Me), which debuted at number one on Billboard’s Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums and Top Rap Albums charts. Special guests BigXthaPlug, NLE Choppa, and Loe Shimmy are also expected to join. 7 p.m. Tuesday, at the Kaseya Center, 601 Biscayne Blvd., Miami; 786-777-1000; kaseyacenter.com. Tickets cost $83 to $210 via ticketmaster.com. Caroline Val WED 6/11 ▼ MIAMI BEACH FOR THE CULTURE Now in its 29th year, the American Black Film Festival (ABFF) is a vibrant celebration of Black talent and storytelling that has shaped the entertainment industry for nearly three decades. Taking place in Miami Beach this week, the festival serves as a dynamic hub for filmmakers, actors, writers, and cinephiles. Hollywood premieres, independent screenings, master classes, and live entertainment are all part of the appeal, but beyond the glitz, ABFF also provides a platform for connection, collaboration, and education, empowering Black creatives and championing Black stories. Various venues throughout Miami Beach and Overtown. Ticket costs vary via abff.com. Ashley-Anna Aboreden [email protected] Photo by Big Picture Media Dance Gavin Dance stops at the FTL War Memorial, see Friday. OUR ANTONIA Miami artist Antonia Wright wins $50,000 Knight Foundation grant. BY CAROLINA DEL BUSTO T ucked underneath the overpass and adjacent to the Miami River is artist Antonia Wright’s studio. She shares the space with longtime collaborator Ruben Millares; its exposed concrete floors and tall ceilings housing treasures upon treasures of art, both past and future. The multidisciplinary Miami artist works with everything from photography to sculptures to print to performance, and now, technology. “In the last few years, my practice has gotten very involved in art and tech, and I’ve just been learning how to keep doing it,” she tells New Times. The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and United States Artists have taken notice of those efforts. The organizations recently announced Wright as a recipient of the Knight Arts + Tech fellowship, which awards $50,000 to five artists who experiment and create with technology and new media. Wright is the only Miami-based artist on this year’s list of recipients. Although she won a grant for her work with technology, the Cuban-American’s first love is poetry. She holds a master’s degree in the field and makes sure to write something — anything — every day. Much of her art process also involves pen and paper. When she has an idea for a piece, she works through the puzzle in her mind by writing through it. “Everything starts with an idea,” says Wright, crossing her legs and sitting upright at her desk. “And then I just figure out how to make it. I learn what I need to learn, and I collaborate with people who have the skills that I need...It’s eerie how much the work turns out exactly like I imagine it,” she adds with a smile, her green eyes ablaze with excitement. Wright creates work that not only excites the eyes and the senses, but entices the mind. She reflects on the times and uses her art as a way to hold a mirror up to society. Her art is powerful and oftentimes political in nature. In 2022, when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Wright was sitting on the board of Planned Parenthood. A women’s rights activist, she felt the sting and foresaw the repercussions of that decision. “Making abortion illegal?” she asks rhetorically. “We all know it doesn’t make it go away, it just makes it harder for people to access, and then they just have to travel out of state.” She set out to delve deeper and discover just how far people would need to go to get a safe abortion. She looked into the distances between states with abortion bans and those that allowed the medical procedure, and compiled mileage from a pre-Roe v. Wade world to a post-Roe v. Wade reality. Astounded by the numbers, Wright taught herself how to write code and wrote a unique algorithm to show this increase in mileage. Whereas artists often use visuals to represent data, Wright wanted to share this data audibly. She connected with a midwife to record the sounds of people giving birth. The midwife would record live births — every guttural scream — and then send the audio files to Wright. “It was like sonifying the data,” she says, glancing over to a pile of notebooks where a small, silver Planned Parenthood badge with her name sits collecting dust. “The pain in the voice...it’s 100 different people going through childbirth, and it’s very vulnerable, very powerful, very beautiful,” she says. She exhibited the piece, titled State of Labor, at Spinello Projects in 2022 before the Perez Art Museum Miami purchased it and later displayed it in 2024. It was one of three tech-related works Wright used for her Knight Foundation grant application. Another was a large cement truck that she turned into a musical instrument. “Then I did another work where I was working with laser lights and coding and programming them with audio,” she adds casually. The artist is already working on her next body of work, which will be shown at La Cometa Gallery in Allapattah in September. “As a poet, I’m always thinking, what is the symbol of our time right now?” In creating her new piece, her mind went to immigration. In one corner of her studio sits a large rusty old raft that washed ashore in Key Biscayne. It was crafted together by old honey barrels and once transported a set of refugees fleeing a communist island. This vessel is being turned into a work of art, in collaboration with Millares. “We’re writing an audio score for it, and then it’s going to be synced to lights,” says Wright as she runs her finger over an oxidized bullet hole on the boat. “This boat is obviously about Miami and Cuba and that whole relationship,” says Wright, standing by the massive piece. “But it’s also about the millions of people who are either forced into exile or involuntarily leave their homes...how horrifying it must be to leave your country by water and arrive at a place that you don’t even know.” [email protected] ▼ Culture Artist Antonia Wright poses in front of a recent body of work. Photo by Chantal Lawrie
