Vacheron Constantin Presents Art in Motion with Najja Moon and the Chris Burden Estate

On November 30, guests gathered at the luxury watchmaker Vacheron Constantin’s Miami Design District boutique to discover “Art in Motion.” Kicking off Miami Art Week, the evening celebrated creativity, craftsmanship, and movement through a site-specific art activation and cross-generational dialogue between artist Najja Moon and the late Chris Burden.

Earlier this year, timed with the opening of its new flagship store in New York, Vacheron Constantin debuted a collaboration with the Chris Burden Estate, presenting an immersive in-store installation inspired by the artist’s Metropolis II (2020), on permanent view at LACMA. In that kinetic sculpture, cars move up to the top, and whiz their way down, winding through streets and skyscrapers.

The resulting installation in New York of tall gold buildings, windows aglow, wrapped in roads where golden cars zoom about (which is also a nod to the brand’s American 1921 driving watch), was replicated in Miami. Once again, it pays homage to the creativity and energy of the city, further expressed through an intervention from Miami-based artist Moon.

Moon’s multi-disciplinary practice brings together visual art, design, language, and performance. She explores queer identity, the body, and movement through drawing and text. For “Art in Motion” with Vacheron Constantin, four of Moon’s black-and-white drawings of curving lines, motifs, and symbols—a visual language distinctly her own—were framed and hung around the store. The repetition and motion of her pieces engage with the mechanical watches on display (some with visibly oscillating movements) as well as three 18^th-century watchmaking tools on view straight from Geneva.

Intervening with the Burden-inspired city sculpture, Moon outfitted digital screens in several windows of each building, displaying photographs and images of drawings, taken of and made from friends and people in her community in Miami, their bodies captured uniquely in motion.  

While enjoying drinks and passed bites, guests on Monday night had the chance to see “Art in Motion” for the first time in the boutique. Between opportunities to view the site-specific work, as well as the latest timepieces from Vacheron Constantin, attendees listened in on a conversation between Moon, executive director of the Chris Burden Estate Yayoi Shionoiri, and editor-in-chief of Whitewall Katy Donoghue. After an introduction from Vacheron Constantin’s president of the Americas, Alexander Schmiedt, Moon and Shionoiri discussed how the collaboration together, the dialogue between disciplines and time, and the role of memory, movement, and performance in both artists’s work and practice.

“Art in Motion” is currently on view at Vacheron Constantin’s Miami Design District boutique through January 2022.