ZERO MILE MARKER The Milestone of Coolness in Miami, and the World

Miami Design District and Midtown are the new epicenters of Miami’s vibrant cultural, dining and shopping offerings. The two neighborhoods are separated by the I-95 overpass,  and under the highway there is a huge parking lot. Vito Di Bari has been asked by MPA to re-design it into an iconic art installation.

Vito Di Bari elected to interpret the Zero Mile Marker concept as a metaphor of the borderline between the two neighborhoods representing a sophisticated quality of life: design and culture, fashion and art, shopping and night life. 

A Zero Mile Marker is the iconic location from which all distances are measured. 

The first one in human history was located in the agora of Athens, in ancient Greece, represented by the Altar of Twelve Gods. Over the centuries, other civilizations adopted this metaphor of origin to create art installations such as the arch representing the Milion of Constantinople in the Byzantine Empire or the Marathi, a sandstone monument with four horses and a pillar locating the geographical center of India. In France the Zero Mile Marker faces the main entrance of Notre Dame cathedral, in Paris, and in China is located at Tiananmen Square, just outside the Zhengyangmen Gate.

Being an Italian artist, Vito has always been fascinated by the story of the Roman Empire’s Milliarium Aureum —aka The Golden Milestone. This Zero Mile Marker was the literal origin for the aphorism that all roads lead to Rome. Yet this maxim is incorrect as all the streets of the Roman Empire were not leading to Rome, they were originated from Rome’s Zero Mile Marker. The Golden Milestone  was the metaphor of the origin of Roman civilization of the known world.

Conceiving this installation, I was inspired by The Golden Milestone. As the Milliarium Aureum was the reference point for the Roman civilization, I have imagined the borderline of Miami Design District and Midtown as the the origin center of modern La Dolce Vita, in Miami and around the world. They are mixed up in a fusion representing the union and separation of the two neighborhoods, two different fashionable faces of the same trendiness of today’s Miami.
[Vito Di Bari]

On July 7, 1919 the first marker for a Zero Milestone was inaugurated on the Ellipse south of the White House in Washington, D.C. The monument is a granite monolith topped by a bronze 16-point compass rose intended as the initial milestone for all road distances in the United States. After a century, we will inaugurate Zero Mile Marker, an art installation intended as the initial milestone for contemporary art of living and ethnic diversity.

Each one of 96 columns of Zero Mile Marker parking has an original painting of one the eight sites symbolizing upscale life around the world. Each painting is inscribed with the distance of the depicted site from the Zero Mile Marker installation —the iconic marker representing the pulsing heart of contemporary energy radiating from the coolest site of Miami.  

The eight sites are:

5th Avenue – New York (USA)
Copacabana – Rio De Janeiro (Brazil)
Downtown Dubai (Emirates)
Long Street – Cape Town (South Africa)
Shibuya – Tokyo (Japan)
La Rive Gauche – Paris (France)
Central District – St. Petersburg (Russia)
Rodeo Drive – Beverly Hills (USA)

Each painting is the interpretation of a different site by a young artist of our team coming from a different Country of the world: Ayan Nag from India, Roberto Gatto from Italy, Olga Tereshenko from Russia, Lucas Terra and Bianca Resende from Brazil, Sanjay Charlton from Jamaica, Robert Shirley from USA and Nikolas Lefas from Greece.

The ethnic diversity of my associated artists is not random, it’s meant to represent the diversity of Miami and its love for the people of the world without any prejudice. Diversity is one of the funding pillars of this great city and it is the profound spirit of this art installation too. Because this is what Zero Mile Marker is all about.
[Vito Di Bari]

Vito Di Bari created it as an homage to the centrality of Miami inspiring the savoir vivre of our contemporary age, enabled and sustained by the enrichment coming from its diversity.