Artist Alex Prager is bringing a surreal and cinematic glimpse of Los Angeles to Miami with “Mirage Factory,” an intricate installation and dreamlike funhouse of memory, myth-making and Old Hollywood gloss.
On Wednesday night, guests — including Shay Mitchell, Casper Jopling, Es Devlin, Yvonne Force Villareal, David Maupin, Sam Falls and Tavares Strachan — stepped into a transformed former movie theater on Lincoln Road in South Beach.
The project arrived at a particularly charged moment for Prager. Not long before diving into the work, she and her family were displaced by the fires near their home in Rustic Canyon in the Pacific Palisades. That reflection carried directly into the process.
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“Once you cross that threshold into a movie theater, you have a collective agreement that you’re committing to magic and the suspension of disbelief,” said Prager, in a black Armani gown, of the setting.
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She stood at the entrance of the exhibition, which showcases an artificial orange grove glowing under a sunset. In the background, a voiceover advertises a too-good-to-be-true L.A. of wide beaches and movie-star dreams, as the air fills with the scent of citrus.
“Everything you see, you can touch, and was created by hands of a human,” said Prager, born and raised in L.A.
Built by more than 100 artisans, next came a room with a miniaturized version of Hollywood Boulevard and landmarks including Grauman’s Chinese Theatre and Musso & Frank Grill, alongside a souvenir shop and billboards. The scene ends with the Los Angeles Aqueduct, which provides water to millions in L.A.
“L.A. was never supposed to be a city,” she went on. “It was orange groves. It took dreamers like [William] Mulholland to bring the water — to steal the water — from Owens Valley, but nevertheless, he brought the water to L.A. in a manufactured way. And the city was created on artifice because of that dream. And it’s been like that ever since. It’s always had this Wild West madness underlying everything.”
The experience, which opened to the public Thursday, is part of a partnership with Capital One and The Cultivist, a global arts club that has evolved into a producer of one-of-a-kind cultural events for its members.
Following projects with artists like Hassan Hajjaj and Alex Israel, Prager’s vision came to Miami with an exclusive first look for Capital One cardholders, who were invited to a private, cinematic dinner inside the installation with L.A. chef Dave Beran of Pasjoli and Seline.
Beran’s L.A.-inspired, three-course menu — a celery root starter, scallop quenelle with caviar, short rib and a fruit-cart-influenced dessert with fermented chilis, all paired with wines — returned the following evening for the larger celebration, which included a staged presentation with actors dressed for a 1960s dinner party, as voices floated through the room with lines like, “This town’s not big enough for all the dreams people bring to it.”
The performance unfolded inside a space completely draped in a single shade of green.
“It’s a nod to the green screen,” said The Cultivist cofounder and chief executive officer Marlies Verhoeven. She launched the platform in 2015 and has grown it into a global membership of more than 30,000. Her vision was to fill a gap she saw in how people access and experience art.
Then came a moment that captivated the entire room: an intimate performance by Diana Ross. After singing classics like “Baby Love” from her days with The Supremes and “I Will Survive” — and bringing her son Evan Ross to the stage — she offered a simple encouragement: “Go for your dreams. They’re yours.”
When Ross hit her last note, guests swarmed Verhoeven to thank her for the invitation. One leaned in, still wide-eyed. “How are you going to top this?”