
… habit of indirection; … to delight in a margin; … not something to do, but something to be experienced, and something to go through (ZS)
You've got to dig to dig it, you dig?

“The belief that goodness is built on a constructed absence, not-doing.”
“Grace, that dictionary. A place where every thing was attached to a meaning.”
“Fear made me work hard, get better. It’s a dirty fuel, but it works.”
“… read an Odyssey in a gasp, a Shahnehmeh in a sigh”
“I did know real, deep joy. […] my lifetime’s allotment”
–Kaveh Akbar

I give my life to art because it stays.
It’s what time doesn’t ruin.
“Lord, increase my bewilderment.”
— (KA)
Rosa de la Cruz. Thank you.

That’s when she found the tree,
the dark, crabbed branches
bearing up such speechless bounty,
she knew without being told
this was forbidden. It wasn’t
a question of ownership—
who could lay claim to
such maddening perfection?
[…]
I Have Been a Stranger in a Strange Land, Rita Dove
Surrealism and Us: Caribbean and African Diasporic Artists since 1940 organized by Curator María Elena Ortiz, at Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, March 10, 2024 – July 28, 2024.
Centered on the intersection of Caribbean aesthetics, Afrosurrealism, and Afrofuturism, Surrealism and Us explores how Caribbean and Black artists interpreted a modernist movement. Artworks, framed within a pre-existing history of Black resistance and creativity, illustrate how Caribbean and Black artists reinterpreted the European avant-garde for their own purposes.

“such silence
still divine presence
echoes immortal migrants
[…]
a cardinal framed in the glass
red light
calling away despair
eternal promise
everything changes and ends”
8., bell hooks

We are thrilled to announce our forthcoming exhibition “A landscape longed for: The garden as disturbance” curated by Laura Novoa and Adler Guerrier. The exhibition, which opens to the public on Friday, March 1 at 5pm, features work by 15 artists, each of whom explores the motif of the garden in its relation to the cultivation and expression of beauty and knowledge.
Each of the participating artists, including Laura Castro, Carolina Casusol, Sandi Haber Fifield, David Hartt, Jim Hodges, Mark Fleuridor, Candice Lin, Cathy Lu, Lee Mary Manning, Ana Mendieta, Reginald O’Neal, Ebony Patterson, Ema Ri, Onajide Shabaka and Kandis Williams, consider the intricacies of the garden as a metaphor for the larger world, using it as a framework to consider cultural, social, political, geographical, and historical issues.
“A landscape longed for: The garden as disturbance” builds on the exhibit’s first iteration, showcased at Locust Projects in Miami in 2021. There, works were displayed with dialogues addressing notions of fragility, remembrance, ornamentation, beauty, and affective traces in the landscape. At CEAM, the show’s themes extend to ecological interdependence, homage, reverence, refuge, renewal, and time emphatically spent on the creation and nourishment of our inner lives.
Laura Novoa is a curator and arts administrator based in Miami, FL, where she works as Assistant Director of Programs and Community Engagement at the Bakehouse Art Complex. She has curated exhibitions for the Miami Design District, Locust Projects, Oolite Arts, and YoungArts, among others. Adler Guerrier is an artist based in Miami who has presented his works in exhibitions at the Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art, Orlando Museum of Art, Pérez Art Museum Miami, NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale, and CEAM.