When night comes,
I am so flushed with wine,
I undo my hair slowly:
a plum calyx is
stuck on a damaged branch.
I wake dazed when smoke
breaks my spring sleep.
The dream distant,
so very distant;
and it is quiet, so very quiet.
The moon spins and spins.
The kingfisher blinds are drawn;
and yet I rub the injured bud,
and yet I twist in my fingers this fragrance,
and yet I possess these moments of time!
Poem by Li Ch’ing-chao, translated by Arthur Sze
Bakehouse at Forty: Past, Present, Future, November 8, 2025 – April 17, 2026.
Present offers a dynamic glimpse of the creative life of Bakehouse today, foregrounding the multiplicity of voices and modes of expression by which artists both reflect and reimagine the world around us. Against the backdrop of great precarity for cultural producers everywhere, Bakehouse artists have forged their own systems of support– not only through shared resources, but through daily acts of showing up for one another. Across this space, ideas flow beyond studio walls, conversations spill into hallways, and countless gestures of kinship and collaboration become integral to the artists’ practice. Representing a microcosm within a broader cultural ecosystem, these fusions– whether intentional, intuitive, or incidental– embody the transformative possibilities of collective care and community building.
Featuring work by 28 current resident and associate artists, Present reflects the breadth of perspectives, disciplines, and identities that define Bakehouse and, by extension, Miami’s cultural landscape. Rather than advancing a singular theme, the exhibition traces various shared touchpoints, highlighting a strong sense of place rooted in the specificity of South Florida; generational connections and divergences; and an emphasis on the here and now that resonates as both timely and timeless.
Out in the sky the great dark clouds are massing;
I look far out into the pregnant night,
Where I can hear a solemn booming gun
And catch the gleaming of a random light,
That tells me that the ship I seek is passing, passing.
My tearful eyes my soul's deep hurt are glassing;
For I would hail and check that ship of ships.
I stretch my hands imploring, cry aloud,
My voice falls dead a foot from mine own lips,
And but its ghost doth reach that vessel, passing, passing.
O Earth, O Sky, O Ocean, both surpassing,
O heart of mine, O soul that dreads the dark!
Is there no hope for me? Is there no way
That I may sight and check that speeding bark
Which out of sight and sound is passing, passing?
Ships That Pass in the Night , Paul Laurence Dunbar
The reach of peace, the sky, the pines,
Leave me no more perplexed,
In which a memory divines
That bodies, buried, yet arise
Across the reach of all the skies,
Unburied and unvexed.
As arisen are the grass, the pines.
In upward-grown, delighted lines —
As a swimmer with one wave declines
And rises with the next.
The Swimmer, Witter Bynner
The artifice of art, the artifice with which it invents symbols to express the way humans are in community, is consistent with the movement whereby a world becomes a world (JR)
“Being John Smith” at Secession, Vienna by Ana Teixeira Pinto. (Mousse)
“Like John Smith, I am unhappy with my own name and thought often about changing it. Also like John Smith, “I have always been desperate for fame” but too embarrassed to chase it. Perhaps Leo Tolstoy was wrong, and we are all unhappy in the same way. Perhaps the desire for fame masks a deeper, entirely valid human need, namely to be seen without the discomfort of rejection. A spotlight can be a shield against loneliness, or at least against those awkward companionless moments at social events. One used to pretend enjoying a cigarette. Now I see a lot of people clutching small dogs. If I had to describe Being John Smith, I would say it’s about the failure to cohere—the awkward moments, the missed connections, the sheer difficulty of alignment. The fractures that are the constant, ungainly companions to our most polished fantasies.”
2025 Hasselblad Award Laureate.
Galeri Poggi. What the Fuck!. Paris Photo.
WB #10, 2005. tirage argentique couleur, contrecollé sur aluminium, encadré. 120 x 150 cm. Edition of 3 plus 1 AP (#1/3).
So many things had a way of looking finer, when they were not so close.
was there any point in being alive without helping one another?
(CK)
Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and knowledge that pass all the argument of the earth,
[…]
And that a kelson of the creation is love,
And limitless are leaves stiff or drooping in the fields,
Song of Myself, V, Walt Whitman