“Strange Fruits'', curated by Yuneikys Villalonga, presents recent work by Marielle Plaisir, a Miami-based multimedia artist. Working in paint, drawing, sculpture, fashion and performance, Plaisir creates intense visual experiences exploring her French-Caribbean heritage against the backdrop of Postcolonialism. In April 2024, Plaisir will present new digital artworks and a multimedia piece that were commissioned by the Museum of Contemporary Art of the African Diaspora (Miami MoCAAD) as a recipient of a 2022 New Work Award from the Knight Foundation. Coral Gables Museum, 285 Aragon Avenue Coral Gables, FL. Runs through April 28, 2024.

"Calida Rawles envisions water as a space for Black healing and reimagines the African American community beyond the stories we already know as a part of the United States’ collective history. Merging hyperrealism, poetic abstraction, and the cultural and historical symbolisms of water, Rawles creates unique portraits of Black bodies submerged in and interacting with bright and mysterious bodies of water(...) Rawles delves into the particular experience of Black people in Overtown, a Miami neighborhood that went from a thriving cultural and commercial hub for Black people to a community dismantled by gentrification, systemic racism, and mass displacement."

Purvis Young: A Visionary of Miami’s Cultural Identity highlights the profound legacy of one of Miami’s most significant self-taught artists. Young’s work, painted on discarded wood, doors, and other salvaged materials, portrays the resilience of marginalized communities while drawing from historical struggles and contemporary social injustices. His signature imagery—migrating figures, angelic protectors, and urban landscapes—transforms everyday life into spiritual and political commentary. Deeply rooted in the cultural fabric of Overtown, Young’s paintings serve as both historical documentation and poetic reflections of the Black experience in America.

In A Tesseract, A Talisman, Sanford Biggers explores the intersection of past, present, and future through a striking new body of work. His handwoven wool tapestries, created in collaboration with Taller Mexicano de Gobelinos, extend his practice of painting on antique quilts—infusing them with fresh narratives and geometric patterns. Meanwhile, his ceramic sculptures, crafted at the renowned Cerámica Suro in Guadalajara, evoke movement and fluidity, transforming rigid materials into dynamic, billowing forms. Drawing from his ongoing Codex series, Biggers continues his investigation of quilts as historical artifacts—once rumored to be coded guides on the Underground Railroad—by reshaping them into objects that blur time and space. This exhibition, marking twelve years of collaboration with David Castillo Gallery, highlights Biggers’s ability to craft “future ethnographies,” bridging ancestral wisdom with contemporary dialogue.

"poemas de sal y tierra" serves as an evolving space where sentiment, symbolism, and memorabilia converge to be celebrated and reimagined. The exhibition functions like a prose-written diary, with artworks acting as entries that preserve feelings and memories beyond physical artifacts. Artists weave new layers of meaning into inherited stories, places, and objects, transforming memory into an active, unfolding conversation. homework The exhibition explores the concept that individuals both come from and become the places they move through, with salt and soil symbolizing ancestral geographies. Through painting, drawing, sound, film, photography, and sculpture, artists translate ephemeral histories and shifting landscapes into tangible artworks, akin to how poetry reveals the invisible threads of existence.

Mildred Thompson’s artistic journey traversed continents and disciplines, resulting in a body of work that bridges science, music, and abstraction. Thompson's multifaceted practice draws from scientific research and a poetic pursuit of abstraction to explore the limits of perception, visualizing extremes of scale—from the human body and built environments to microscopic particles and the vastness of the cosmos. After relocating from the United States to Germany in the late 1950s, Thompson created surreal, figurative drawings and etchings, often depicting female figures. In the late 1960s and 1970s, her focus shifted to built environments, as seen in her “Wood Pictures” series—abstract minimalist compositions made from found wood, reminiscent of architectural features and facades. Her explorations continued with the “Window Paintings” (1977), where brightly colored, abstracted spaces appear framed by windows. Thompson's works on paper from the 1970s and ’80s highlight her inventive approach to printmaking and drawing, including the intricate intaglio prints of the “Death and Orgasm” series (1978) and expressive watercolors of celestial constellations like Pleiades III (1988). In the 1990s, she delved into invisible forces with paintings inspired by particle physics and quantum mechanics, such as “String Theory” (1999) and “Magnetic Fields” (1991). A significant selection of her “Heliocentric Series” (c. 1990–94) is on display for the first time in over three decades, presented alongside her monumental “Music of the Spheres” (1996) paintings, each depicting a different planet and accompanied by Thompson's original electronic music compositions titled Cosmos Calling.

The Mobile Interactive Mural Exhibition is part of Miami MoCAAD’s mission to merge art, history, and technology. The project transforms public spaces into cultural storytelling hubs where murals serve as interactive canvases. Each artwork layers historical memory with augmented reality, offering audiences immersive access to Overtown’s rich cultural legacy. "Telling Overtown Stories, Saying Their Names" uplifts communities by spotlighting the contributions and untold stories of Overtown’s people. Visitors can engage with the murals not only visually, but also digitally, experiencing recorded histories incorporated in QR Codes, curated narratives, and artist insights. This fusion of tradition and innovation reflects Miami MoCAAD’s vision for art that educates, connects, and inspires.