poemas de sal y tierra

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We are proud to announce that ‘poemas de sal y tierra (poems of salt and soil),’ a curatorial partnership between FORGOTTEN LANDS and homework, opens Saturday, April 12th at 5pm and runs through May 31st.

Featuring works by Nathalie Alfonso, Stephen Arboite, Jonathan Carela, Raymel Casamayor, Nicole Combeau, Adler Guerrier, Amanda Linares, Elisa Bergel Melo, Devin Osorio, Charlie Quezada, and Victoria Ravelo.

“Cultural identity… is a matter of ‘becoming’ as well as of ‘being.’ It belongs to the future as much as to the past.” — Stuart Hall

‘poemas de sal y tierra (poems of salt and soil)’ is a collective living archive, an ever evolving space where sentiment, symbolism, and memorabilia come together to be held, celebrated, reimagined, and shared. The gallery space functions like a diary written in prose, where the artworks serve as entries–preserving feelings and memories beyond physical artifacts. Artists from the Caribbean and Latin America weave new layers of meaning into inherited stories, places and objects, transforming memory into an active conversation that continues to unfold.

The exhibition explores the idea that we both come from and become the places we move through. Salt and soil, fundamental to land and sea, symbolize ancestral geographies. Through the use of various mediums–painting, drawing, sound, film, photography and sculpture– artists translate ephemeral histories, embodied knowledge and shifting landscapes into tangible artworks, much like poetry makes visible the invisible threads of our existence.

Through their work, the artists transform fragments of themselves into an active, breathing record of resilience and reverence for their roots, lived experiences and their own sense of belonging. This exhibition is ultimately a reflection of how we collect, connect and preserve the intangible, and how we return to it for comfort, clarity, and renewal. Here, collective memory isn’t fixed; it shifts, grows, and evolves through each work.

-curated by FORGOTTEN LANDS and homework


April 12 – May 31, 2025
7338 NW Miami Court, Miami FL, 33150

FORGOTTEN LANDS has emerged as a leading force in contemporary Caribbean art, serving as a vital platform that amplifies voices across the diaspora and launches the careers of emerging artists. Their mission centers on illuminating the often-overlooked narratives of the Caribbean while weaving together the region’s rich historical tapestry.Founded in 2017, founders Cory Torres Bishop and Don Brodie initially conceived FORGOTTEN LANDS as a benefit exhibition in the aftermath of hurricanes Irma and Maria. What began as an immediate response to environmental disaster has evolved into a dynamic 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. Today, they forge meaningful collaborations with artists, galleries, institutions, and brands to create transformative projects spanning exhibitions, community events, artist talks, publications, and beyond.

homework, founded by Aurelio Aguiló and Mayra Mejia, is a contemporary art gallery dedicated to innovative curatorial practices and fostering meaningful dialogue. By showcasing diverse artists through multidisciplinary exhibitions, homework aims to connect with global audiences, promote creative innovation, and challenge traditional artistic paradigms.

AG2025_1045258a ou passer du monde visible

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AG2025_1045258a

Discours de reception de Dany Laferriere, 28 mai 2015.

“C’est Legba qui m’a permis de retracer Hector Bianciotti disparu sous nos yeux ahuris durant l’été 2012. Legba, ce dieu du panthéon vaudou dont on voit la silhouette dans la plupart de mes romans. Sur l’épée que je porte aujourd’hui il est présent par son Vèvè, un dessin qui lui est associé. Ce Legba permet à un mortel de passer du monde visible au monde invisible, puis de revenir au monde visible. C’est donc le dieu des écrivains.”

What will you do?, Kaveh Akbar

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In The Nation, Akbar asks us to help the vulnerable.

What is the purpose of an app, owned by a man who cheered on the new regime at inauguration, that carousels these videos in between baby photos from casual acquaintances and ads for underwear and linen sheets?

What is the purpose of a government that disappears its people? Ozturk had a valid student visa, as did Alireza Doroudi, a doctoral student at the University of Alabama, and Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia grad student, who were both disappeared in similar fashion this month.

[…]

The videos, the disappearings, are obvious intimidations intended to choke dissent, both in the specific cases of Ozturk, Doroudi, and Khalil, and in general, in the cases of all of us who look or pray or believe or vote like them. The Trump regime, like every despotic autocracy before it, is making examples of a few to terrify the many. Into what? Silence, compliance, submission? Anguish?

I hate their harm. I hate the countless rifts they’ve torn open across time as they preen for cameras and expand their bitcoin empires. But they don’t give a shit about me or my hate. My place of birth (Tehran [or Port-au-Prince]) disqualifies me from concern. It also endangers me.

[…]

I think about the children Ozturk was learning to help. The hours of tenderness stolen from them. I think about my father, whose beloved big sister is right now this second desperately fighting a serious cancer in Tehran. My father became an American citizen some years ago, but feels he cannot safely, under this regime, return to Iran to be with her. I want to hurl my laptop through the window typing that. The hours stolen from them. From Doroudi and Khalil and every soul domestic and abroad who has ever been stolen or stolen from by the American project.

AG2021_2030352a or But you knew … didn’t you?

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AG2021_2030352a

This is an Administration that does not have to slip on a Signal banana peel to reveal its deepest-held prejudices and its painful incapacities. You get the sense that we would learn little if we were privy to a twenty-four-hour-a-day live stream of its every private utterance. Part of what was so appalling about Trump and Vance’s recent meeting with Volodymyr Zelensky was not just their penchant for channelling the world view and negotiating points of Vladimir Putin but their comfort in expressing them, barking them, at the Ukrainian President in front of reporters in the Oval Office.

[…]

The threat of autocracy advances each day under Donald Trump, and it is a process that hides in plain sight. Some will choose to deny it, to domesticate it, to treat the abnormal as mere politics, to wish it all away in the spirit of “this too shall pass.” But the threat is real and for all to see. No encryption can conceal it.

David Remnick, New Yorker, 032625

Know what the snake said? Said, ‘But you knew I was a snake, didn’t you?’ (TM)