Credits: 2025, Ecostylia Media.
From November 13 to 16, 2025, MIRA Art Fair founded by Manuela Rayo took over the Maison de l’Amérique latine for a second boutique-format edition. Considered the first fair in Europe exclusively dedicated to contemporary Latin American art. It aligned itself with the week of art fairs in Paris. In addition, it brought together just over twenty galleries around an all-female selection committee. At the paris art fair, the capital welcomed collectors, curators, museum professionals, enthusiasts and families. They were drawn to a concise, demanding program that favored dialogue between continents.
One Fair, One Gaze: MIRA, Promise Kept
Some words contain a secret direction. MIRA means both aim and directed gaze. It’s the ambition voiced by Manuela Rayo, founder and director of the fair: to offer Paris a place where Latin American creation occupies the central axis of perspective, not on the margins of a large generalist event, but at the center of a setup designed for it. The second edition took place from November 13 to 16, 2025, at the Maison de l’Amérique latine, 217 boulevard Saint-Germain. Moreover, it chose timing that matched the flow of Paris Photo. From the opening, performances and screenings asserted the fair’s ‘live’ dimension. The 2025 selection was carried by a 100% female committee, which combined historical figures, young voices and diasporas. The capital receives collectors, curators, museum professionals, enthusiasts and families. They are drawn to a concise, demanding offering. This one prioritizes the dialogue between continents.
MIRA claims a boutique scale. Just over twenty galleries within a carefully designed scenography. The bet: to fit the density of a continent into a private mansion. One moves from salon to salon, down to the basement and then to the garden. There, late-afternoon light silhouettes figures. Languages cross: Spanish, Portuguese, French. You hear lively greetings, some laughter, whispers of negotiation. The fair aims to be a place of transactions as much as an encounter space, where purchases sometimes happen. This occurs over the days after long conversations.
At the Maison de l’Amérique latine, A Path At Eye Level
The Maison de l’Amérique latine offers itself here as a living set, an architecture of narrative. Its four floors are occupied. Intimate rooms host textile art, and the enfilades of salons open photographic perspectives. Corridors lead to installations, while the garden-level lets conversations surface around a coffee. The feeling of a collector’s house at fair scale sets the tone: you look closely, you discuss, you come back. The route offers an immersion that refuses the bustle of monumental halls in favor of proximity.
“Here, I can explain every piece,” says a gallerist. We note the phrase as a promise to the visitor: legibility above all. The MIRA team insists on the sustainability of the setup: reusable materials, reasoned transport, eco-responsible programming. Nothing ostentatious, but a chosen course consistent with many works. These question the Amazon, borders, memory and power relations.
An All-Female Selection Committee
This 2025 edition relies on a selection committee made up of four professionals with complementary anchors: Paola Creixell for PAC Art in Houston, Chloé Trivellini for Island Cultura in Paros, Patricia Marshall associated with the Jumex collection in Mexico City, Maritza M. Lacayo from the Pérez Art Museum Miami. Their perspectives infuse the programming: historical figures and emerging voices, diasporas and territories in tension. The common thread? Image and matter are put at the service of a narrative of long time, that of migrations. They also evoke coloniality, but also a presence asserting itself in the present.
Chronicle of a Guided Visit
My partner, my assistant and I start with the right wing. The first booth attracts a calm crowd. Waddington Custot, house founded in 1958 in London, soon presenting on rue de Seine in Paris, displays an expertise in 20th-century masters and sculpture. Here, the presence of a patinated bronze resonates with a canvas stretched in muted color. You can make out the tooth of the canvas, the skin of the metal catching still-warm light. A gallerist whispers: “We come to nourish a dialogue, not to impose a canon.” The sentence finds an immediate echo in the next room.
Revolver Galería, born in Lima in 2008 under the impetus of the artist Giancarlo Scaglia, has made the circulation of ideas a principle of action. The works tell of coastlines, archives, trajectories interrupted then resumed elsewhere. A young woman stops in front of a photograph where the sea looks like a palimpsest. The print, with a mat grain, catches the light and brings out spray. We hear her say: “It’s like time has two tides.” The mediator nods: “That’s what we’re looking for: a memory at eye level.”
Then 193 Gallery, Paris, two spaces on rue Béranger dedicated to a program built like a world tour. Their hang at MIRA uses scenography as a language. Textiles tremble, painting replies, photography installs its frozen calm. “We want strong writings,” the director tells us. These are writings that do not overtop, that accompany the gaze.
A few meters away, Almine Rech, an international network born in Paris, reminds that the contemporary is plural. You go from an almost monochrome canvas to an exploded piece that borders on performance. “The intimate fair creates a different kind of listening,” says an assistant. She notes visitors’ unhurried curiosity, technical questions, the desire to understand processes and contexts.
Further on, Galerie Raphaël Durazzo, opened in 2022 near Matignon, brings 20th-century avant-gardes into the conversation. Surrealism, often feminine, and dialogues with today’s artists. An aquatint vibrates next to a recent photograph. “We’re here to weave past and present,” explains the gallerist before adding: “Diaspora is not a theme, it’s a way of inhabiting images.”
Verve Galeria, São Paulo, formed from an artist-run space. You feel the energy of a collective turned institution. Young and established practices, varied media, attention to the city as a laboratory. We notice a print where power lines overlay tree branches. The accompanying text evokes a connected landscape, an ecology of the gaze.
Galerie Younique, Paris 13th, champions young international creation. The works here assert a rhythm. The sound of visitors becomes a breath. A performer, still made up, passes in a flash. “At 6 p.m. I go back to the Cenote Ring,” she says with a smile. We note the time. Performances punctuate the days, giving the route a pulse.
Galeria da Gávea, Rio de Janeiro, offers an immersion in contemporary Brazilian photography. The images focus on situated bodies, urban and forest territories. Debates on the power of images and the legacy of a colonial gaze can be felt. “We want to show complexities,” says the co-founder. Visitors, many of them, take time to sit on a bench. Thus they enter the layers of a visual narrative.
From booth to booth, other presences map MIRA: Chantal Crousel, Loeve & Co, Eric Dupont, guadalajara90210, Mascota, and several galleries from Latin America, the Caribbean, Europe and France. The dialogue is less a declaration than a daily practice. People negotiate and make appointments. They also send lists of works by message. Then they compare provenances and prices. Finally, they plan a hang for a museum or an apartment.
Photography, Textile, Memory: The 2025 Axes
The 2025 edition places a particular accent on Latin American photography and on certain national scenes, with a focus on Brazil as part of the Year of Brazil in France. Textile practices are approached as sensitive archives: they preserve gestures, translate the memory of migrations, tell of continuities within rupture. Works evoke slavery, borders and displacements. They also address forms of repair through materials. Moreover, they explore textures and their capacity to hold together.
The public programming orchestrates this polyphony. Talks explore textile art, photography and power, as well as the Amazon. They also address forms of cooking of intuition. Additionally, they link taste and memory. Performances and screenings fit into the rhythm of the days. The Nube Lab workshops welcome families on Sundays from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. At the time, adjustments remained possible: MIRA published updates, and the host institution relayed schedules and access modalities.
At the heart of the route, the exhibition “Drawing the Territory / Dessiner le territoire” brings together works from collections that each question territory, memory and identity. The intent is not demonstrative. It’s rather to let emerge lines of force that give the whole a common breath.
The Market, At The Pace Of Conversation
Prices range from a few thousand euros for emerging artists to higher amounts for historical figures. The sculpture of a big name can make checkbooks tremble. However, the fair remains a field of exploration. We also observe collectors returning three times to the same piece. They take notes, ask questions about conservation conditions. They also ask whether the artist works in series. “I want to see the work in different lights,” one of them says. The team smiles, reopens a blind, pivots a lamp. Selling here resembles a conversation that takes its time.
This pace suits MIRA. The intimate format allows priorities to be hierarchized and opens perspectives on artists’ trajectories. It also allows listening to diaspora narratives without reducing them to labels. The institutional bet is also at play: museum and FRAC officials stop by, assess, receive dossiers. You feel that the second edition seeks less spectacle than the stability of a meeting destined to remain.
A Calendar Adjusted During the Week of Art Fairs in Paris
After a first edition held from September 18 to 22, 2024, MIRA chose November for its second edition. This repositioning is not trivial. By taking place during Paris Photo, the fair placed itself at the heart of an international flow already present in Paris, while avoiding the crush of Art Basel Paris. The effect was immediate: many professionals could cross paths. Thus, the curious public more easily found its place in a now readable schedule.
The fair’s editorial function sharpened: making works rarely seen in Europe visible. In doing so, it builds bridges between galleries from Latin America, Europe and France. It also consolidates an annual appointment likely to become authoritative. Put simply: MIRA addressed professionals as much as informed amateurs. It also didn’t forget families thanks to a workshop program designed for them.
Before You Go: Essentials For The Visit In Mind
We step back outside as night falls over Saint-Germain-des-Prés. The courtyard buzzes, doors swing to bursts of music. One last image: a child tugs his mother’s sleeve and points to an embroidered fabric where blue lines run. “It looks like a river,” he says. She replies: “It is one, and it continues in us.” We tell ourselves that MIRA succeeded in its gesture: directing the gaze toward works of a present that speaks to us here.