uninhabited forests
under the bridge project space,, North Miami, FL
2019
Throughout the show I hosted various events, including a poetry reading by Spanish poetry collective [paréntesis], an ink making workshop with Zero Waste Miami, and an artist talk about the nature of objects and memory with my older brother who has a similarly familiar relationship with many of the objects in the exhibition.
Most photos by Oriol Tarridas
The work in this show began with a memory and a few persistent dreams.
For now the work is all one, all answering to the same name – uninhabited forests – though this will likely change over the next few weeks & months. Some of the work was envisioned beforehand, simple notations in a sketchbook evolving into pages and pages of seemingly random numbers and math!, while others were built on-site in response to the space, the materials I brought with me and time.*
Because some of this work didn’t physically exist outside of my sketchbook until it was built in the space and due to the playful intuitive process that I employ for making most of it, I haven’t had time with the actual finished project yet. So for now, I just have the initial thoughts and musings, memories and shared stories that I began with. Over the next couple of months I will visit the work and listen for what it has to tell me. If you ask me what it is about don’t be upset if I seem frustratingly vague, just know that this is why. What I’ve made is a reaction to a feeling – a gut instinct. The language is not yet there.
But there is the memory and the dreams. The memory is of this immense forest that was behind my childhood home just across the creek. I would spend hours and hours in it; there were trails and at least one small clearing with a fire pit (who built that?!). Sometimes I would run into other people and I’d hide and play spy not wanting to be discovered by these strangers in my forest. Then in sixth grade I watched from the back door as they cut it all down. Apparently we lived in the suburbs on the edge of an expanding town – who knew? I continue to have dreams about this once sacred place.
The dreams are recurring ones since childhood of secret doors in the back of closets and the spiral staircase that was hiding behind all the sheets in the hall closet. There are also dreams of running turned to flight but surely that’s not relevant. I also spent a lot of time lying on floors or across chairs staring at the ceiling, or looking into mirrors I’d lay on the floor, imagining the world wrong side up.
So for now this is my wrong side up version of a misremembered or re-remembered place. Perhaps it seems familiar to you.
*(this is funny, ms word wants me to change “me and time” to “time and me” and for some reason it seemed important to share that with you)