Tierra Húmeda
Situated above a staircase inside the Miami Beach EDITION hotel, this site-specific grows from a desire to examine the layered ties between land, memory, and imposed systems. Drawing from the Florida and Caribbean environments—places shaped by migration, extraction, and constant transformation—the work reflects on how the natural world resists containment and how traces of lived experience settle into material.
The work combines handmade ceramic tiles with raphite drawings on wood panels. Native plants from both regions surface gently through the graphite, creating a delicate, almost fading presence that evokes remembrance and vulnerability. These organic forms, placed within geometric structures that slowly loosen across the panels, imply a subtle release from rigid boundaries.
A grid serves as both a visual anchor and a metaphor for various mechanisms of control: colonial mapping, urban planning, and other frameworks that enforce order. As the installation continues, the ceramic segments begin to spill outward from the composition, resembling draped cloth. The drawings stem from photographs I took throughout Florida, particularly in Ocala while exploring the Everglades. The connection to the Caribbean appears through the depiction of a Lantana plant, a species native to the region and one I grew up with in Cuba; the reference comes from a specimen currently growing in my backyard.
On the left side of the composition, a representation of water sits directly above the cascading tiles, creating a dialogue about fluidity as something that defies restriction. The image suggests water flowing onto the grid, prompting the tiles to slip past the frame and descend downward. This movement becomes a quiet act of resistance, hinting at a gradual break from limiting structures.
Through materials that carry their own histories—clay as earth, wood as shelter, graphite as trace—the installation considers how landscape can act as a site of defiance, how softness can endure, and how drawing can reclaim space to standardize, suppress, or erase.
Tierra Húmeda is part of No Vacancy, Miami Beach, a juried art competition that supports and celebrates local artists, provokes critical discourse and encourages the public to experience Miami Beach’s famed hotels as art destinations.
This project is supported by the City of Miami Beach, in collaboration with the Miami Beach Visitor and Convention Authority (MBVCA) and the Greater Miami Convention & Visitors Bureau (GMCVB).
