Who's Your Super Friend? Heroes Arrive for Basel

Holy Basel Schmazel Batman! Who are all those spandex-clad avengers bruising up eyeballs around town?

Aquaman, Thor, The Silver Surfer, Ms. Marvel, The Wonder Twins, Super Girl, and Cat Woman have all been spotted at the Miami Beach Convention Center and in Wynwood the past two days, leaving bewildered bystanders shaking their heads.

A legion of nearly twenty Boston artists have swooped in for the fair dressed as their favorite X-Men, Avengers, and Super Friends. They are in town as part of the Super Heroes Project, the brainstorm of Brian Burkhardt who moonlights as Professor X.

Last year, following a group show Burkhardt was participating in at a Manhattan Gallery, one of the exhibiting Gothamites asked Burkhardt where he was from. When he responded “Boston,” the New Yokel retorted, “where’s that.”

Sick of getting sand kicked in his face, the mild mannered artist joined forces with photographer Tanit Sakakini—aka Firebird-- and their crusade to defend the honor of Bean Town was launched.

“I basically told him to screw off,” Burkhardt fumes, adding that his snob-fighting posse represents artists everywhere. “I was tired of these people putting artists who live outside of New York down. It’s that mentality that if you’re not from there or London or another big art metropolis you don’t count.”

Performance artist TT Baum, making appearances as both Aqua Man and The Silver Surfer this week, says his caped cohorts will be out in force this Saturday afternoon on South Beach hoping to deliver a blow to the evil minions of the industrial art cartel.

“There will be about 20 of us doing the electric glide in front of the Convention Center,” he laughs. --Carlos Suarez De Jesus