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Buy More or Sell Your Art? The Answer's in the Stars

Financial advising gets an ancient update at Art Basel Miami Beach, thanks to artists Naomi Fisher and Agatha Wara.
“Swamp of Sagittarius,” a project Agatha Wara & Naomi Fisher at Art Basel Miami Beach with astrological advisors Morgan Rehbock & Marty Windahl. Images courtesy the artists

If this comes as a surprise, you're not playing the game yet: People pay people money to tell them what art to buy. It's gooiest of solid assets, pliable for, say, maybe even your own molding—depending on your level of influence. The most money-minded of these advisors often employ other people to develop algorithms, too, that may predict, to varying rates of success, their advice, like suggesting a joint venture—or, more likely, that you buy that painting you went back twice to look at. Their jobs are a lot like the ancient practices of astrologers, whom buyers—in then case, royals or war financiers—made world-changing plans on. Finding in their own experiences a relationship between astrology and this modern sort of speculation, artists Naomi Fisher and Agatha Wara have created the equivalent of such a scrying and situated it between booths N26 and N27 at Art Basel Miami Beach: Swamp of Sagittarius, appointment-based art advising informed by the stars.

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"Astrology's one of the most ancient pools of knowledge that you can dip into, so when people start taking it seriously, you can understand how this is no less reliable than consulting with an art advisor," Wara tells me, following my own reading. "There are all these different ways to try configure what art is worth. There are art advisors who are hired for this, and there are also things like artrank.com and all these things that try to forecast which artist will perform well in a market and which won't, and they take their own data pools. [
] We're providing a similar kind of service that's not based on algorithms, but is based on the alignment of the planets and the stars."

"A lot of the people that come in are sort of 'astrology people,' and then they come and realize we're focusing on a really specific kind of astrology which is called financial astrology," Wara continues, "and linking it to this context. It's an art market, to do with buying and selling and finance in general. It's kind of a fringey field in both financial circles and astrological circles." Luckily, Fisher and Wara found their seers in Marty Windahl and Morgan Rehbock, the two astrologers who were brought in specially for the event. As far as art experiences go, personally, let's just say the stars are moving.

Marty Windahl & Morgan Rehbock, astrological advisors in "Swamp of Sagittarius," a project by Agatha Wara & Naomi Fisher at Art Basel Miami Beach.

Morgan Rehbock giving a reading in "Swamp of Sagittarius," a project by Agatha Wara & Naomi Fisher at Art Basel Miami Beach.

Naomi Fisher, "Empress," peppermint essential oil infused wax, 2015.

Naomi Fisher & Agatha Wara in their project "Swamp of Sagittarius," at Art Basel Miami Beach.

Email swamp.sagittarius@gmail.com to set up your reading, or visit the NOVA section of Art Basel MIami Beach between booths N26 and N27 for walk-ins.

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