Voladores: Sanctuary exhibition Coralina Rodriguez Meyer solo show featuring Mother Mold monuments & Linea Negra photographs from the Mama Spa Botanica
Miami Dade College Koubek Center 2705 SW 3rd Street Miami FL 33135 Little Havana
Opening Saturday May 13, 2023 12-6pm
On view May 13 – June 10 2023
Celebrating the fertile lessons from equatorial fertility traditions such as the Voladores in Peruvian vernal danzas (the artist’s biological ancestry) or the Vanuatu Gol Land Diving ritual in the South Pacific; the installation of Mother Mold monuments & Linea Negra photographs from the Mama Spa Botanica is a warning sign rendered in weathered procreative effigy figures hovering above Miami’s redlined waterlines threatened by intersecting man made and climate crisis.
5 prismatic pregnant bodies (cast in the Mama Spa Botanica workshop where the works were collaboratively created with the artist’s Q+BIPOC neighbors)- sway in Sea Grape leaves, Sabal Palm fronds, Flan Boyan seed pods and Banyan roots above the Miami Dade College Koubek Memorial Center campus sanctuary near Calle Ocho in Little Havana. Situated in Miami’s predominantly Cuban diaspora neighborhood where the former US president was arrested, the works honor a formerly progressive stronghold currently under political, economic and censorship threat due to aggressive legislation the artist has fought for the past 4 years. Figurative monuments cast intimate ephemera, environmental waste in domestic construction materials are suspended from trees acknowledging the traumatic legacy of post-reconstruction America and its legacy today in constructing American mythological violence where Florida has become the central political target. The polychromatic bodies offer an alternative ritual celebration, recalling the indigenous millenary traditions from the Andes to the South Pacific where the artist spent time as a child involved in indigenous lead environmental protest movements.
The retablo installation is a culmination of a year long artist residency at Miami Dade College Koubek Memorial Center where the artist involved students, staff and surrounding neighbors into her collaborative practice. The exhibition’s title draws from a tradition celebrated in the anthropological objects located in Miami Dade College & University of Miami’s Kislak Americas collection. Fellow resident Kuyayky ensemble will perform with 3 generations of musicians, harnessing over a hundred years of sonic tradition for the exhibition opening. Photographs & Footage of the exhibition shot by Darmyn Calderon.
Lambastic 