Paradise Lost? The Alchemy of the Everyday
Curated by William Cordova

Yanira Collado, Lou Anne Colodny, Juana Valdes, Charo Oquet, Karen Rifas, Ernesto Oroza, Onajide Shabaka, Robert Thiele, Rick Ulysse, Susan Weiss, and Purvis Young

June 16 – July 27, 2018

“Space, like language, is socially constructed; and like the syntax of language, the spatial arrangements of our buildings and communities reflect and reinforce the nature of gender, race, and class relations in society. The uses of both language and space contribute to the power of some groups over others and the maintenance of human inequality” - Leslie Kanes Weisman (Discrimination by Design: A Feminist Critique of the Man-made Environment, 1994)

The works selected for this exhibition represent four generations of South Florida artists whose practice is informed and rooted in the geography, community, and multicultural diversity of the region. These are artists who have endured and evolved as South Florida has changed, and yet still transcend the boundaries of expectation.

The exhibition offers a glimpse into the prism of South Florida art through sculpture, painting, drawing, audio, and film. The works are derived from many different parts of the region and utilize a variety of concepts and scale. Exhibiting artists include the late Purvis Young, the first real home-grown talent whose prolific and complex work gained international critical acclaim well before the 2000s; Karen Rifas, whose expansive site-specific ephemeral installations have been a trademark and influence on the ever- evolving local scene since the 1970s; Robert Thiele, the first Florida artist to be included in the prestigious Whitney Biennial (1975); Juana Valdes, whose work has been included in various biennials, including the Havana and SITE Santa Fe Biennials. Onajide Shabaka, a visual artist, anthropologist, botanist and writer. A cultural practitioner whose artistic contributions, depth and influence in South Florida are unending. These are only a few of the many practitioners whose works will be highlighted in this glimpse of a Southern Florida collective.

- William Cordova

William Cordova is an interdisciplinary cultural practitioner born in Lima, Peru. Lives and works Lima/Miami/New York City. He received a BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, 1996 and an MFA from Yale University, 2004. Cordova been an artist in residence at The Studio Museum in Harlem, American Academy in Berlin, Germany, Museum of Fine Art in Houston’s CORE program, Headlands Center for the Arts, Artpace, Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council among others. His work is in the public collection at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, Yale University, New Haven, CT, Museo de Arte de Lima, Lima, Peru, Ellipse Foundation, Cascais, Portugal, Perez Art Museum, Miami, FL, La Casa de las Americas, Havana, Cuba among others.