From November 13 to 16, 2025, MIRA Art Fair, founded by Manuela Rayo, took over the Maison de l’Amérique latine for a second edition in a boutique format. Considered the first fair in Europe exclusively dedicated to contemporary Latin American art, it aligned with the art fair week in Paris. Additionally, it brought together just over twenty galleries around an entirely female selection committee. At the art fair in Paris, the capital welcomed collectors, curators, art enthusiasts, and families. They were drawn by a focused and demanding proposition that favored dialogue between continents.
A fair, a vision: MIRA, promise kept
There are words that contain a secret orientation. MIRA means both goal and directed gaze. This is the ambition expressed 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 sidelines of a major 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. Furthermore, it chose a timing that matched the flow of Paris Photo. From the opening, performances and screenings affirmed the ‘live’ dimension of the fair. The 2025 selection was supported by a 100% female committee, which articulated historical figures, young voices, and diasporas. The capital welcomes collectors, curators, art enthusiasts, and families. They are attracted by a focused and demanding offer. This prioritizes the dialogue between continents.
MIRA claims a boutique scale. Just over twenty galleries within a carefully crafted scenography. The challenge: to encapsulate the density of a continent in a mansion. Visitors move from salon to salon, down to the basement and then to the garden. There, the late afternoon light outlines silhouettes. Languages mix: Spanish, Portuguese, French. You hear lively greetings, some laughter, whispers of negotiation. The fair aims to be a place of transactions as much as a space for encounters, where purchases sometimes happen. This occurs over the days after long conversations.
At the Maison de l’Amérique latine, a journey at eye level
The Maison de l’Amérique latine presents itself here as a living decor, an architecture of narrative. Its four floors are utilized. Intimate rooms host textile art, and the series of salons open perspectives to photography. Additionally, the corridors lead to installations, while the garden level allows conversations to surface over coffee. The sensation of a collector’s house at the scale of a fair sets the tone: you look closely, you discuss, you come back to see. The journey offers an immersion that rejects the hustle of monumental halls in favor of proximity.
"Here, I can explain each piece," a gallerist whispers. We note the phrase as a promise to the visitor: legibility above all. The MIRA team emphasizes the sustainability of the setup: reusable materials, thoughtful transport, eco-responsible programming. Nothing ostentatious, but a direction assumed in coherence with many works. These question the Amazon, borders, memory, and power relations.
An entirely female selection committee
This 2025 edition relies on a selection committee composed of four professionals with complementary backgrounds: Paola Creixell for PAC Art in Houston, Chloé Trivellini for Island Cultura in Paros, Patricia Marshall associated with the Jumex collection in Mexico, 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 material are used to tell a story of long time, that of migrations. Additionally, they evoke coloniality, but also a presence that asserts itself in the present.
Chronicle of a guided tour
My associate, my assistant, and I start with the right wing. The first stand attracts a calm crowd. Waddington Custot, a house founded in 1958 in London, soon to be present on rue de Seine in Paris, showcases 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 sense the grain of the canvas, the skin of the metal capturing a still warm light. A gallerist murmurs: "We come to nurture a dialogue, not to impose a canon." The phrase finds immediate resonance in the next room.
Revolver Galería, born in Lima in 2008 under the impetus of artist Giancarlo Scaglia, has made the circulation of ideas a principle of action. The works tell of coastlines, archives, interrupted trajectories then resumed elsewhere. A young woman stops in front of a photograph where the sea resembles a palimpsest. The print, with a matte grain, catches the light and brings out spray. We hear her say: "It looks like time has two tides." The mediator agrees: "That’s what we’re looking for: a memory at eye level."
Next is 193 Gallery, Paris, two spaces on rue Béranger dedicated to a program constructed like a world tour. Their display at MIRA plays scenography as a language. The textiles quiver, the painting responds, the photography installs its icy calm. "We want strong writings," the director tells us. These are writings that do not overshadow, that accompany the gaze.
A few meters away, Almine Rech, an international network born in Paris, reminds us that the contemporary is expressed in the plural. You move from an almost monochrome canvas to a fragmented piece that borders on performance. "The intimate fair creates another type of listening," says an assistant. She notes the unhurried curiosity of visitors, the technical questions, the desire to understand processes and contexts.
Further on, the 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 are here to weave past and present," explains the gallerist before adding: "The diaspora is not a theme, it’s a way of inhabiting images."
Verve Galeria, São Paulo, was formed from an artist-run space. You can feel the energy of a collective that became a structure. Young and established practices, varied mediums, attention to the city as a laboratory. We notice a print where power lines overlap with tree branches. The accompanying text evokes a connected landscape, an ecology of the gaze.
Galerie Younique, Paris 13th, champions young international creation. The pieces displayed here claim a rhythm. The noise of visitors becomes a breath. A performer, still in makeup, rushes by. "At 6 p.m., I’m going back to the Cenote Ring," she confides with a smile. We note the time. The performances punctuate the days, giving the journey 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. You can perceive debates on the power of images and the legacy of a colonial gaze. "We want to show complexities," asserts the co-founder. Many visitors take the time to sit on a bench. Thus, they enter the layers of a visual narrative.
From stand to stand, other presences draw the map of MIRA: Chantal Crousel, Loeve & Co, Eric Dupont, guadalajara90210, Mascota, and several brands from Latin America, the Caribbean, Europe, and France. The dialogue is less a declaration than a daily practice. Negotiations and appointments are made. Additionally, lists of works are sent by message. Then, provenances and prices are compared. Finally, a display is planned for a museum or an apartment.
Photography, textile, memory: the 2025 axes
The 2025 edition places a particular emphasis on Latin American photography and 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, and tell of continuities in rupture. The works evoke slavery, borders, and displacements. They also address forms of repair through materials. Moreover, they explore their textures and their ability to hold together.
The public programming orchestrates this polyphony. Conferences explore textile art, photography and power, as well as the Amazon. They also address forms of intuitive cooking. Furthermore, they connect taste and memory. Performances and screenings are part of the daily rhythm. The Nube Lab workshops welcome families on Sundays from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. At the time, adjustments were still possible: MIRA published updates, and the host institution relayed the schedules and access modalities.
At the heart of the journey, the exhibition "Drawing the Territory / Dessiner le territoire" intersects works from collections that each question territory, memory, and identity. The aim is not demonstrative. It is 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 vibrate. However, the fair remains a field of exploration. Moreover, we observe collectors returning three times to the same piece. They take notes, ask questions about conservation conditions. Additionally, they inquire if the artist works in series. "I want to see the work in different lights," says one of them. The team smiles, reopens a blind, rotates a lamp. The sale here resembles a conversation that takes its time.
This pace suits MIRA. The intimate format allows for prioritizing its goals and opening perspectives on artists’ trajectories. Furthermore, it allows for listening to diaspora stories without reducing them to labels. The institutional challenge is also at play: museum and FRAC officials pass by, measure, receive portfolios. You can feel that the second edition seeks less the feat than the stability of an event destined to endure.
An adjusted schedule during the art fair week in Paris
After a first edition held from September 18 to 22, 2024, MIRA chose November for its second edition. This rescheduling is not a minor detail. By taking place during Paris Photo, the fair positioned itself at the heart of an international flow already present in Paris, while avoiding the hustle and bustle of Art Basel Paris. The effect was immediate: many professionals were able to cross paths. Thus, the curious public found its place more easily in a now readable agenda.
The editorial function of the fair became clearer: to make visible works rarely seen in Europe. Thus, it creates bridges between galleries from Latin America, Europe, and France. Moreover, it consolidates an annual event destined to become authoritative. It must be said simply: MIRA was aimed as much at professionals as at enlightened amateurs. Furthermore, it did not forget families thanks to a program of workshops designed for them.
Before leaving: the essentials for the visit in mind
We return outside as night falls on Saint-Germain-des-Prés. The courtyard buzzes, doors swing open to bursts of music. One last image: a child tugs at 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 within us." We tell ourselves that MIRA has succeeded in its gesture: directing the gaze towards works of a present that speaks to us here.
