After a few years of being considered behind-the-scenes photographers, two friends have elevated their status to directors for high-budget music video productions.
Now they want to inspire other Miami creatives to pursue their goals.
Lucas (Luki) Avila, 23, and Pete Park, 25, have been joined at the hip for the past year and a half, collaborating on projects and working on sets with big names in the music industry, particularly Latin artists. Aside from directing together, they are both individually established.
Avila and Park wanted to give back to their community and grow it as well, without the toxicity of gatekeeping. With this objective in mind, they got together with other creatives to curate an event that happens every two to three months in different venues. Local Miami artists of any medium can attend to appreciate art, network, and have a good time.
The purpose was “for people to come together rather than judging each other from afar,” explained Avila.
4YOU was put together by a team of seven, four of them being creators who contributed their own personal work to the exhibit. The creators include directors Avila and Park, painter and multidisciplinary artist Kasper, and Brian Valencia and Angela Muñoz, who run design studio “Estudio Organico.”
The administrative team consists of Ely Rojas, Gabriel Velasquez, and Victor Antigua.
Less than seven hours after the RSVP link was first posted on Aug. 10, it sold out.
The event was hosted at Galeria Azur in Allapattah on Aug. 18. At the event’s peak, there were around 400 people inside the venue.
The name 4YOU came from the team wanting to encourage local innovators and create a safe space. Inclusivity was the goal and it was met.
“As a creative, it’s really important to network and meet people that have the same mindset as you. I feel like it’s so much easier to get better as an artist if you’re building with other people,” said Soren Knippen, a local photographer who attended the event.
Event goer Gioceli Marin said there was a very welcoming atmosphere throughout the night.
“We didn’t know anybody else there except Luki and Pete but people were still talking to us,” she said.
and photographs he took of Jhay Cortez (left) and Myke Towers (right). (Courtesy of Alberto Diaz)
is the co-founder of Tumbao, a Latino Based party
brand who hosted the sounds for the event. (Courtesy of Gianfranco Sinning)
With the success of the first exhibit, the team revealed that 4YOU will become a consistent event so members of the Miami art scene always have something to look forward to.
The location for their event in December has not been revealed, but it will happen during Art Basel week. The team expects as many as 800 people to join in the December event.
“I’m looking forward to our next event,” said Kasper, one of the 4YOU creatives. “We have a lot of big things that we have planned now that we have a really big budget to work with.”
In the first event, the hosts got to exhibit a range of their work, all revolving around their specialized form of art.
Kasper said that for their future events, they want to give other local Miami talent a platform and the team will start taking applications from artists who wish to display their work.
October will mark one year since Avila and Park got their first taste of curating a gallery.
That’s when Avila and Park put together a gallery called “ParkXAvi” in Medellin, Colombia with collaborator Estudio Organico. Avila and Park’s work with Colombian singer Feid caused them to be well-known in the area.
This gallery created a domino effect and led to their new mission: Not only to demonstrate their own art, but to put a magnifying glass on Miami’s range of artists.
“It definitely was a stepping stone,” Estudio Organico’s designer Brian Valencia said of their Medellin event.
The past year has been a long ride for the team, but they continue evolving to be able to provide a consistent artistic and local community.
“The way I see this community in a year, or five years from now, I see it more inclusive. I see it as a place where anybody with a camera and a dream can be supported,” said Park.
Update: This story originally included a mention of a Nov. 4 event that had to be canceled.
