At the FIU Project Room
Bakehouse Art Complex, 2015
Curated by Brittni Winkler
The HIVE Project was a composition that was made to form our project space into a work of art. The 2015 second year MFA class of FIU was challenged to work together as a whole to make a work that would be thought provoking and move seamlessly between artists. Individuality was thrown out the window in an attempt to create something truly fresh and an installation that is truly collaborative.
The materials were brought in from the neighborhood around the Bakehouse Art Complex and from the artists themselves. It was important to us that we used recycled materials as they would not only take on a new identity but the items would be re purposed and re imagined. The room began to take the shape as an abstracted home being blown apart by an invisible force. Palm fronds hung from the ceiling, cans and bottles floated mysteriously in the air and the structure that was built in the middle of the room seemed to be ripped into the atmosphere.
In many ways the room became a reflection of Miami. The back room was turned into a shrine of vanity that took after local religious forms of worship including San Lazaro and the Virgin Mary. At the same time the figure was of a woman undressed crowned with a disco ball head and adorned with decorative ribbon. To the group she was a symbol of the greater party mindset of south Florida.
To top off the project we added a fog machine to the mix and it created a hazy and dream like effect to the room. The room was complete, we turned the room into a time warp of sorts. It referenced the gentrification machine, hurricanes, night life, vanity and poverty. The main visual challenge was to get the viewer to step outside of their reality and enter our HIVE.
