Orishas of Miami: Namesake Origins and Finding Our Offerings

Orishas of Miami: Finding Our Offerings is a project that seeks to find the true meaning of our cities’ names on a spiritual level. As Queer folks, we choose our names and as people of color, we have often had to leave our rightful names behind. In that same vein, we have had to live covertly and suppress our ancestral spiritualities. In this project, we will be excavating the characteristics of Opa Locka, Little Haiti, Liberty City, and Miami Beach. The city has recognized the connection between the communities’ spiritual livelihood and its advancement.

Stitched With You

Stitched With You is a feminist textile photo series that documents female elders, capturing their perspectives about aging and society's take on invisibility at Collective 62 and other Miami Art Centers. The act of stitching serves as a metaphorical bridge, connecting generations and cultures while symbolizing the passage of time. Through workshops and storytelling, I’ll invite participants to engage in dialogues that transcend temporal and spatial boundaries, fostering empathy and understanding across diverse backgrounds. At its core, Stitched With You employs the act of stitching as a metaphorical conduit.

The Abortifacient Garden

Throughout human history, writers in many parts of the world have described abortifacients - "that which will cause a miscarriage", any substance that induces abortion. Christina Pettersson will grow an artist-led ‘garden’ devoted to the history of botanical abortifacients, focused on our specific region and local population. This will be a widely sourced local community based project, seeking naturalists, gardeners, healers, scientists, historians, etc. who study plant and human histories.

Commissioner as Social Practice

A creative guide for imagining new models to collect art and support artists in community.

A hard copy and interactive guide that documents, illustrates, and open-sources the learnings and successes of Commissioner’s community-driven model. 

SCREENERS- energy producing series of sculptures for the public using solar technology

SCREENERS are a new body of work by Mayer. These multimedia sculptures are crafted from custom metalwork and artisanal glass. SCREENERS serve as aesthetic focal points and will display video projects while simultaneously functioning as energy generators, illuminating themselves and other devices with sustainable electricity. This project marries sculptures with utility, embodying the benefits of creative solar energy harvesting while fostering interactive engagement.

The Living Room: A Symbiotic Home

The Living Room reimagines the home as a site of climate care and environmental repair as he reconstructs a South Beach studio apartment into a sprawling aquaponics sculpture to experiment with how regenerative design can function without direct land access. Using water impacted by nutrient runoff in the greater Everglades watershed, the aquaponics system is being designed to filter and clean water, grow food for the home, and evolve into a natureculture learning center, a domestic-scaled institution, where dwelling becomes an opportunity to “live our climate politics” by reshaping our relationships to water, power, and food production.

Between Earth and the Sun

An experimental documentary that intimately explores the collective memories and inner worlds of Black men, with a specific focus on those raised in Miami. Using a non-linear narrative approach, the film delves into everyday life, dreams, memories, and existential inquiries. It functions as a collective stream of consciousness, unveiling the diverse experiences and shared symbols that shape the contemporary identity of Black men. Through in-depth interviews, including dream exploration, Between the Earth and the Sun aims to function as an archive, capturing and preserving the personal narratives and cultural nuances of its participants. These narratives not only provide insight into individual journeys but also serve as a reflection of broader societal contexts and historical legacies.

kin

A ceremony of release and offering to the ocean honoring the weight of the Atlantic coastline as a site of hope, grief, and dreaming for Afro-diasporic queer subjects. In staging the intimate gesture of hair braiding– an act which normally occurs in the interior– in nature, “kin” is a transgression of public space which encourages its audience to question the boundaries of intimate queer expression. Inspired by the garments of Egungun masquerade, the spectacularity of Carnaval costume, and Haitian drapo, the scale of the garment isolates braider and model from the other activations occurring simultaneously outside of the protective perimeter of the “salon cape.” While braiding occurs, performers activate the beach around the perimeter of the garment, as the rising tide draws the garment’s hem into the waves.

UndrBelly

A magazine focused on celebrating Miami's vibrant food culture through community events and multimedia projects. We aim to create events that bring the local community together, celebrating the rich culinary traditions of Miami. Our video content and photography projects will further highlight the essence of Miami’s diverse food scene. By showcasing local culinary stories, generational recipes, and unique food-related art, we support local creatives and promote cultural preservation. Our events are designed to foster a sense of community, encouraging locals to engage with and appreciate the diverse flavors and culinary heritage that make Miami unique. Through compelling visual storytelling and engaging community activities, UndrBelly strives to preserve and elevate Miami’s authentic food culture.

Behind the TEASE

Behind the TEASE highlights the lives of two Miami burlesque artists through performance, film and photography. Those witnessing this project will be lured into a journey that extends beyond the glitz and glamor of the stage and into the rawness of what goes into being a tantalizing entertainer.

Zafa, Preserving the oral history

Zafa, Preserving the oral tradition, is a performance and video site-specific installation work, utilizing an ethnographic approach in documenting research through audio field recordings and individual interviews in different geographic locations in the Dominican Republic and Haiti. The island of Quisqueya-Ayiti is an island affluent in religious, spiritual, folkloric traditions as well as supernatural beliefs. This project focuses specifically on recording and preserving personal accounts with many of the island's mythical beings. These traditions make up cultural narratives that are deeply woven into the fabric of everyday life and are original accounts that may be lost or forgotten if not properly preserved directly from those who practice and maintain these legacies.