All Elite Wrestling Women’s Champ Thekla and AEW Ring of Honor Pure Champ Lee Moriarty are not only creating in the professional wrestling ring. They’re also creating outside the ring on another canvas — and displaying their artwork.
Moriarty will be in South Florida on March 19-20 at Pérez Art Museum Miami for GAME TIME alongside Get in the Game: Sports, Art, Culture. Thekla will join him there on March 20.
GAME TIME is the first major museum-led conference examining cultural production in and around sports. By inviting athletes and artists to share the stage, GAME TIME offers space for cultural institutions to consider, explore, and investigate the intersection of art and sports.
There will be other athletes, artists and guests featured during the two-day event:
Poetry readings by actor Vincent Piazza and MacArthur Genius poet Hanif AbdurraqibThe U.S. premiere of On the Line, a documentary exploring the lives of three professional fightersA talk on the art of boxing featuring Monument Lab’s Paul Farber, producer Francesco Saviano, artist Cheryl Pope, and journalist Travis VoganListThe cast of cross-disciplinary participants include artist and legendary broadcast journalist Tabitha Soren; sportscaster and former NFL player Desmond Howard; Nora Halpern, executive director of the Cultural Olympiad for LA28; Smithsonian National Museum of African American History curator Dr. Damion L. Thomas; and Miami Herald sports writer C. Isaiah Smalls II and many others.
Thekla and Moriarty will be part of a discussion on art and wrestling. Synopsis: Professional wrestling blurs the lines between performance art, athletics and camp. From wrestlers with artistic practices to exhibitions that capture the sport’s larger-than-life energy, this conversation explores the growing exchange between contemporary art and wrestling. Artists, wrestlers, and curators come together to reflect on creative life inside and outside the ring.
The session will be moderated by curator and creator Adam Abdalla. He was also instrumental in founding and leading the annual NADA (New Art Dealers Alliance) event in Miami, which included Moriarty in 2024.
For more information, visit https://gametimesessions.com/
Perez Art Museum Miami is at 1103 Biscayne Blvd., near Maurice A. Ferré Park in downtown Miami.
At NADA (New Art Dealers Alliance) in 2024 during Miami Art Week with debuting artist and All Elite Wrestling ROH Pure Champ Lee Moriarty (pictured right), presented by Orange Crush (the journal of art and pro wrestling), which is led by NADA board member Adam Abdalla (pictured middle), who is also the president of Orange Crush and the Cultural Counsel. Also pictured (left), Franklin Sirmans, an art critic, editor, writer, curator and the director of the Pérez Art Museum Miami. File Photo By Jim Varsallone
Miami Herald
Jim Varsallone writes a high school sports column twice a week, featuring top performers in all varsity sports (boys and girls) in Broward and Miami-Dade counties. He also covers pro wrestling, something he’s done since his college days in the late 1980s. Now in his fifth decade of coverage, he currently follows WWE (Raw, SmackDown and NXT), AEW, Ring of Honor, TNA Impact Wrestling, MLW, WOW, NWA, and the South Florida indies, mainly CCW. He writes MMA, too — mostly profile stories and video interviews with American Top Team and Sanford MMA fighters in South Florida. As for pro wrestling, he writes feature stories and profile pieces, updates upcoming show schedules in South Florida, photographs the action and interviews talent (audio and video) — sharing the content here and via social media on his Facebook, Twitter and YouTube channel: jim varsallone (jimmyv3 channel).
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