As the art world began to descend upon Miami for the annual circus that is Art Basel Miami Beach, artists faced off with Olympic sailors on Biscayne Bay Monday afternoon, competing in a regatta-cum-performance art piece from French Conceptual artist Daniel Buren (1938–).

Titled Voile/Toile–Toile/Voile (Sail/Canvas–Canvas/Sail), the artwork, which features Buren’s signature colorful stripes on the boats’ sails, was originally performed in Berlin in 1975, and made its U.S. debut at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis in 2018. The sails will be hung like paintings—Buren has called them “canvases that sail the wall”—in order of each color’s placement in the regatta at the Pérez Art Museum Miami.

The piece was restaged outside the PAMM off the Museum Park Baywalk in Biscayne Bay as part of “Star Compass,” a series of three large-scale Miami Art Week art activations.

The projects also include installations of “The Great Elephant Migration,” a herd of 100 life-size elephant sculptures made by Indigenous artisans in India, and a prototype of Miami Reef Star, a set of 46 3D-printed concrete stars by Carlos Betancourt and Alberto Latorre set to become an artificial reef off the Miami Beach coast. It’s all curated by Ximena Caminos, the founder and artistic director of the ReefLine, the forthcoming underwater sculpture park, and Dodie Kazanjian, founder of Rhode Island nonprofit Art and Newport.

Daniel Buren, Voile/Toile–Toile/Voile (Sail/Canvas–Canvas/Sail), 1975/2024, regatta Miami Florida. Photo by Lee Smith.

“It’s a huge honor to have Daniel Buren in relation to Indigenous artists,” animal rights activist Ruth Ganesh, who founded “The Great Elephant Migration,” told me as we watched the sailboats tack across Biscayne Bay.

“The idea was that it’s migration and we’re on the beach, so let’s have something that moves,” she added. “It is also super joyful, like the herd!”

Daniel Buren, Voile/Toile–Toile/Voile (Sail/Canvas–Canvas/Sail), 1975/2024, regatta Miami Florida. Photo by Lee Smith.

A small crowd had gathered to watch the event, with Pucci artistic director Camille Miceli loudly cheering for the blue sail as the boats crisscrossed the bay.

To find sailors to race the boats for the artwork, the curators turned to local sculptor and furniture designer Emmett Moore of the Miami Yacht Club. Among the competitors were his wife, Sarah Newberry Moore, and Lara Dallman Weiss, who represented the U.S. at the 2024 Paris Olympic Games.

Daniel Buren, Voile/Toile–Toile/Voile (Sail/Canvas–Canvas/Sail), 1975/2024, regatta Miami Florida. Photo by Lee Smith.

Also at the tiller were local artists Justin Long and Nicholas Harrington, and identical twin Olympic hopefuls Fynn Olsen and Pierce Olysen. The teen phenoms—who are part of the Olympic development program and hope to sail at the 2028 L.A. games—took first and second place, respectively, flying the pink and purple sails.

But with the breeze blowing and the warm sun shining, the prospect of a week-long, art-fueled celebration ahead, it briefly felt like all of us—the sailors, the curators, the collectors, the art journalists, and even the elephants—could be winners.