- Sinking Feeling
- Sinking Feeling
- Sinking Feeling
- Sinking Feeling
Sinking Feeling
Eddie Arroyo, Claudio Nolasco, Jamilah Sabur, Erin Thurlow & Antonia Wright
2 March–
29 April 2023
Curated by: Heather Diack
Sinking Feeling
Eddie Arroyo, Claudio Nolasco, Jamilah Sabur, Erin Thurlow & Antonia Wright
Curated by: Heather Diack
In synch with rising sea-levels artists are increasingly attuned to the sinking feeling of climate catastrophe. For the many millions of people who live in dense coastal cities like Mumbai, Amsterdam, São Paulo, Venice, New York, Guangzhou, and Vancouver, water occupies a paradoxical status—at once a means of survival and a source of potential demise.
In this respect, Miami, with all its extremes and idiosyncrasies, is a harbinger for coastal cities worldwide. The details may be local, but the implications are global.
Designated within North America as “Ground Zero” for the impending peril it faces from warming waters and flooding, water surrounding the metropolis of Miami is projected to surge two feet in less than forty years. Sinking Feeling includes work by five Miami artists who tap into this ominous pulse, which, in a cynical twist, coincides with being designated as the most unaffordable city in the United States. This gateway to the Caribbean and Latin America, popularly dubbed the “Magic City,” is pitched as an ever-expanding touristic tropical paradise, incessant skyrises erected, even as the drenching effects of global warming loom.
The poetic and poignant artworks included in this exhibition hone-in on the inseparability of the actualities of the climate crisis from everyday lived realities and formative histories. Parallels to the increasing vulnerabilities of other coastal cities can be gleaned. Combining references to the transformational role water plays in our survival and potential demise, the artworks in Sinking Feeling are as much about immersion and reflection as creating a rising tide of interconnected awareness and environmental justice.
Exhibition Guide (313.18 KB)
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Artist Bios
Eddie Arroyo
Eddie Arroyo received his BFA in Painting from Florida International University in 2001. Solo exhibitions of his work have been staged at the Bakehouse Art Complex, Swampspace, and the Haitian Heritage Museum. Arroyo has presented at group exhibitions including the Whitney Biennial (2019), CAC New Orleans, Arsenal Contemporary Art New York, the Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum, Spinello Projects and the Little Haiti Cultural Complex. In 2018, he was the recipient of the 2018 South Florida Cultural Consortium Visual and Media Artists Fellowship and lectured at New York Academy of Art and Florida International University.
Claudio Nolasco
Claudio Nolasco is a Dominican-born photographer currently residing in South Miami, Florida, where he is an assistant professor of photography at the University of Miami. Nolasco holds a Master of Fine Arts from Columbia University and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from The Cooper Union School of Art. He has exhibited at such galleries as Art in General, Torrance Shipman Gallery, the Lipany Gallery at Fordham University, the Philadelphia Photo Arts Center in Philadelphia, PA, and the Miami Dade College Art Gallery in Miami, FL, and recently held an exhibition as part of the Half-King Photo Series in NYC.
Jamilah Sabur
Jamilah Sabur is a Jamaican-born artist living and working in Brussels. Recent exhibitions include: The Harvesters, Bass Museum, Miami Beach, FL (2022); Eltanin, Broadway, New York (2022); DADA Holdings, Nina Johnson, Miami (2021); Prospect 5 New Orleans (2021); La montagne fredonne sous l’océan/The mountain sings underwater, Fondation PHI, Momenta Biennale, Montréal (2021); Observations: Selected Works by Jamilah Sabur, University of Maryland Art Gallery (2020); Mending the Sky, New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans (2020); Here Be Dragons, Copperfield, London (2020). Sabur holds a BFA from Maryland Institute College of Art and an MFA from University of California, San Diego.
Erin Thurlow
Erin Thurlow (BFA, San Francisco Art Institute, MFA, Rutgers) lives and works between Qualicum Beach, BC and Miami, FL. Solo exhibitions include Dimensions Variable (Miami) and Mercer Union (Toronto). Group exhibitions include Phraseology at the Bass Museum (Miami Beach), After the Fire at Centre Skol (Montreal), and Heat Island at Smackmellon (Brooklyn). He has received grants and other funding from Miami-Dade Department of Cultural Affairs, Joan Mitchel Foundation, the N.E.A., Ontario Arts Council and Toronto Arts Council. Fellowships and residencies include Banff Center (AB), the Atlantic Center for the Arts (FL), three-walls (IL), and the Millay Colony (NY).
Antonia Wright
Antonia Wright is a Cuban-American artist born in Miami, Florida. Through a multimedia practice of video, performance, photography, sound, light, and sculpture, Wright responds to extremes of emotion, control, and violence as it relates to systems of power. Her work has been exhibited at the Frist Art Museum, Nashville, TN, Contemporary Art Center, New Orleans, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C., Pioneer Works, Brooklyn, The Margulies Collection and the Pérez Art Museum Miami. Wright’s work has been published in The New York Times, Artforum, Art in America, Hyperallergic, i-D, New York Magazine, and the Miami Herald.
Curator Bio
Heather Diack
Heather Diack is Associate Professor of Contemporary Art and History of Photography at the University of Miami. She holds a PhD from the University of Toronto and is a graduate of the Independent Study Program of the Whitney Museum of American Art. Diack is the author of Documents of Doubt: The Photographic Conditions of Conceptual Art (University of Minnesota Press, 2020) which was awarded a Photography Network Book Prize (2021) and co-author of Global Photography: A Critical History (London: Routledge, 2020), Diack was previously the Terra Foundation Visiting Professor at the John F. Kennedy Institute, Freie Universität in Berlin (2016).