Capital One and The Cultivist, alongside acclaimed artist Alex Prager, guided guests through her surreal, cinematic installation, the Mirage Factory. Inspired by the golden age of Hollywood, the experience immersed attendees in a dreamlike world of nostalgia, glamour, and illusion. The evening included an intimate performance by 13-time Grammy Award-nominated singer, Diana Ross.
Notable guests included Alex Prager, Shay Mitchell, Cait Bailey, Casper Jopling, Franklin Sirmans, Diana Ross, Evan Ross, Es Devlin, Yvonne Force Villareal, Marlies Verhoeven, Stefano Tonchi, David Maupin, Sam Falls, Tavares Strachan, and more.
Characterized by distinctive mise-en-scène, Prager’s work explores complex topics using the city of Los Angeles as the subject. This immersive environment extends Prager’s decades-long fascination with the tension between the staged and the real, and reimagines the city’s dream machinery as something much more intimate, uncanny, and alive. Prager turns the myth of Los Angeles inside out — revealing a city built as much from memory and imagination as from light and landscape.
Attendees also enjoyed an intimate dinner curated and prepared by award-winning chef Dave Beran, who brought his West Coast influence to Miami and crafted a multi-course experience that complemented Prager’s Golden Age of Hollywood dreamscape.
Guests moved through vivid sets that draw inspiration from three pivotal developments in Los Angeles’s history that forever shaped the city we know today. A metropolis willed into existence by human engineering, unorthodox thinking, motion pictures, and seekers of all kinds, Mirage Factory spotlights the manufactured heartbeat woven into the very fabric of the city. Beneath the glow of an artificial orange grove and the hum of the ever in transformation Hollywood Boulevard, Prager captures what she calls the “beautiful confusion” of modern life — moments that feel both familiar and dreamlike.
Employing traditional filmmaking techniques, Prager creates unexpected images and scenes that unlock the imagination and challenge rational thought, inviting viewers to read beneath the glossy surface.
Image credit: Daniel Seung Lee
