A landscape longed for: The garden as disturbance

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.

Memories within

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Zora Neale Hurston said, “Like the dead-seeming cold rocks, I have memories within that came out of the material that went to make me.” These “memories within” are the subsoil of my work. But memories and recollections won’t give me total access to the unwritten interior life of these people. Only the act of the imagination can help me.

The Site of Memory, Toni Morrison
Untitled (Homage to Zora Neale Hurston, West King, St. Augustine), 2020.