OFF to Santa Fe!!

RESIDENCY THEME 2015-2016 : IMMIGRATION / EMIGRATION

SFAI is pleased to announce Immigration / Emigration as its next residency and programmatic theme. From September 2015 through May 2016, SFAI and its community partners will explore several questions: Who immigrates/emigrates and why? How do the journeys of migrants contribute to who we are as a collective community? What happens when diverse communities come together with local and global advocates, activists, and policy makers to explore alternative models, narratives, projects, and interventions relating to the complex terrain of immigration and emigration? How can SFAI cultivate participatory discourse between invested local stakeholders and creative practitioners that examines complexities and inequities in current and historic immigration systems in the United States?

January 2017

With the sculpture studies I created during my residency at SFAI, I was thinking about climate change migration and how people are moved around the globe because of changes in the environment.

The video pictured above is footage from Cape Romano, a peninsula on the west coast of Florida that is eroding quickly into the Gulf of Mexico. It is the site of a series of dome homes that were built in the 1980's.

"At Cape Romano on the southwest coast of Florida there is a modern architectural ruin. Abandoned by a fleeting yet hopeful moment in design, it was intended to sustain hurricane force winds. The wreckage is a series of dome homes constructed in the 1980’s that appear to be marching out to sea while the land they were built upon vanishes into the Gulf of Mexico. It is a phenomenon known as the “teardrop effect”. This aptly named natural process is intensified by rapid sea level rise. The conditions at Cape Romano are the same for the entire Florida coastline as they are both peninsulas. I live in Miami where streets flood and giant barges move sand from the Bahamas in a futile attempt to abate the inevitable, almost as if to hide it like a terrible secret, a denial that is ironically referred to as a “sand shortage”. The very concepts of home, place, nation, boundary and permanence are in crisis as people are forced out of the arctic, away from the equator, and inland from disappearing shorelines." Felecia Carlisle (written for a presentation at SFAI)

Below is a video of Alex (son of artist, Margarita Cabrera) playing the diddley bows I made as practice for making my string sculptures. (It was family month at SFAI.)