Intersections (after Lautréamont)

“Caught in the dilemma between being the edge and the top, between being surface and symbol, the idea of reinventing Miami as ‘the capital of Latin America’ can be problematic. A sense of belonging and spreading roots have gained authority over the stereotypes of ‘the city of sun and frivolity’ or ‘the nostalgic city of temporary refuge.’ While that does not exclude the risk of replacing old labels with new, seen from another perspective, the willingness of acceptance, and even pride, in becoming ‘another capital for Latin Americans’ is remarkable.” said Eugenio Valdés Figueroa, CIFO’s new director.

Some of the leading figures of Dada and Proto-Surrealism identified themselves during the second and third decade of the twentieth century with the famous phrase by the Count of Lautréamont: “Beautiful as the chance meeting on a dissecting-table of a sewing-machine and an umbrella.”

The title of the exhibition, Intersections (after Lautréamont), “refers to the notion of beauty and how, during each era, art is responsible for reformulating, subverting, and/or proposing alternative ways of understanding beauty. There is no single criteria in the exhibition, opening spaces for tense intersections, armed with both correspondence and friction,” says Valdés Figueroa, “Placing the questions raised by the works of this year’s winners through the prism of this new juncture in the city that hosts them, could produce moments of estrangement, disturbing crossroads, poetic collisions. That is already an initial point of convergence, among other possible intersections offered by this exhibition: on one hand, the changes produced in the Miami scene in relation to Latin America; on the other hand, the wide range of concerns that occupy the award-winning artists.”