Deering Contemporary
DEERING CONTEMPORARY 2025: Unraveled Tales
The Deering Contemporary “Unraveled Tales” curated by Angela Chaine is an exhibition that delves into the notion that we are the voices of all those who once traversed this land, this collective exhibition examines how we continue to narrate ancestral stories and the pivotal role we play in preserving historical, archaeological, and environmental heritage for future generations. It also aims to raise awareness of the rapid urban development that threatens to erase our city’s history.
The Deering Estate holds a rich legacy, not only through its architectural history but also through its connection to the surrounding landscape and the communities who once inhabited this place—including prehistoric and Indigenous groups such as the Tequesta, as well as the Deering family.
Featuring both international and Miami-based artists, this exhibition presents site-specific works that invite viewers to reflect on our connection to the land and the stories of the past that shape our present. Through an exploration of materiality, these works merge into a collective visual narrative, proposing imaginative and reconstructed tales.
The works in the exhibition range from sculpture, installation, video performance, textiles, and photography and will sprawl across the Estate’s grounds and in the Garden Room of the Richmond Cottage. There will also be workshops and other programs during the extent of the exhibition.
Image:
Pamela Suasti
Tapestry I (PRIMARY IMPRESSION), 2024
Detail of Large-format tapestry. Process of woven papier-mâché hand-modeling
50 x 150 cm
Courtesy of the artist
Exhibit is on display daily, January 26 – March 23, 2025. The opening reception will be held on January 26th.
About the exhibiting artists:
Dona Altemus
Dona Altemus’ interdisciplinary practice utilizes allegories of geometry as a means to dissect ecological, technological, cultural narratives embedded within spaces of existence. The phenomenology of shape in relation to architecture, nature and folklore is activated often by ephemeral spatial interventions and collage as a means to embody or decode entangled understandings of transference on a single surface. The work aims to cultivate curiosity, reset our processing speed and heighten one’s sensitivity to nuance.
Amanda Linares
As a multidisciplinary artist with a particular focus on drawing and artist books, I consistently explore universal themes such as identity, belonging, absence, and reconnection. My practice revolves around the intentional utilization of material and space, extending across installations, photographs, drawings, artist books, and sculptures. Embracing the challenge of integrating new materials, I delight in the interplay of their contrasting qualities—fragility, durability, and volume. Influenced by literature and personal experiences, my work employs poetic language and narration to reflect upon the passage of time and the intricacies of memory. My foundation in graphic design pushes my art practice conceptually and formally and contributes to the use of volume and space through composition and typographical solutions.
Claudio Marcotulli
Claudio has always been attracted to non-linear, surreal universes where abstract images and concepts connect the human form to the natural world and the cosmos. Moving between film and sculpture, he uses light, color, and aerodynamics principles to explore existential questions around cosmology and flight. Through the creation of large, illuminated gravitational sculptures, resin encapsulated assemblages, and videos of birds and paragliders engaging in flight, Claudio often investigates physics and metaphysics. He also uses the image of the eye to punctuate his perception of the universe – some place between reality, utopia and unknown multiverses. His process is further nurtured by deep-seeded memories from Venezuela (his native country) and Panama (his mother’s homeland), existentialism and poetry.
Nicole Pedraza
Nicole Pedraza is a contemporary dance artist of Nicaraguan/Mexican descent that is fueled by cross disciplinary collaborations in music, visual art, and technology. Her current interest lies in meaningful collaborations with diverse artists in Miami that foster community and inspiration within each other’s works. Through her movement vocabulary, she explores intimacy, parallels to nature and humanity, and shifting power dynamics. She has presented choreographic works and/or danced at the Perez Art Museum Miami, SuperBlue, The Kampong National Tropical Botanical Garden, the Arsht Center, Moss Center, Miami Theater Center, and the Deering Estate. Nicole has trained at institutions like Jacob’s Pillow and New World School of the Arts. She has danced professionally with Mike Tyus & Co, Syncopate Collective, Zest Collective, Volta Collective, SAXYN Dance Works, Peter London Global Dance Company, Miami DanceMakers, Pioneer Winter Collective through Grass Stains 2024 and more. She is also an Artist-in-Residence at the Deering Estate where she created site-specific work inspired by botany and architecture and an environmental dance film, Caracoles En Cemento, selected for local and international film festivals. Nicole has also received funding from The Peace Studio, New World School of the Arts Alumni Foundation, and Locust Projects Wavemaker Grant.
Juliana Torres
Juliana Torres is a contemporary mixed media artist working with photography, collage, assemblage, kinetic structures, and fiber art. Born in São Paulo (SP), Brazil, she started writing poetry telling children’s stories in 2007. In 2021 Bennu Editora published “Juventina vai...”, her first children’s book. Torres received an MFA in visual arts in 2021 and is currently in the MA in Photography at Barry University. Her collages, assemblages, kinetic structures, and fiber art always depart from her lifetime archival photographs mixed with ordinary, readymade, found, and natural materials. Branches, potato bags, tissue papers, and photos become a mobile, a glass collage, a book, or any other story-telling artwork. Her will is to liberate the images she captures by transforming them into poetry in a re- signifying process where pictures lose their original status, and the viewers lose the obligation to see them as “only” pictures. She also applies art and its benefits to her social programs in Brazilian communities. A member of FAMA (Fiber Artists Miami Association) since 2021, she is currently working on a mixed media series combining weaving and ceramics inspired by her ancestry theme and experimenting with alternative photographic processes.
Pamela Suasti
Visual artist, graduated from the Pontifical Catholic University of Ecuador, with a postgraduate degree in Contemporary Textile Practices from the National University of Arts in Buenos Aires (UNA). Her artistic practice is rooted in learning and mastering textile techniques, which she applies to objects, sculptures, installations, and performances. In 2022, she won the Brazil Prize, and in 2021, she received first honorable mention at the National Sculpture Biennial of San Antonio de Ibarra. She has participated in group exhibitions in Argentina, Portugal, Spain, and France, as well as in art fairs such as Pinta Miami 2023 (represented by Galería Llamazares) and Hybrid Art Fair 2023 (Madrid, Spain). Additionally, she has taken part in residencies like "Sacha Ukupacha" (Cuyabeno, Ecuador, 2019) and "Mapa Textil" (San Juan, Argentina, 2022). She currently lives and works in Quito, Ecuador.
Laura Villarreal
Villarreal is an interdisciplinary artist working at the intersection of fiber, painting, and photography. Through the use of embroidery, paint, and textile on paper and canvas, Villarreal creates a transdisciplinary language and poetry inspired by the vivid colors and ancient traditions of her Mexican roots. In the late 1990s, she immigrated to the United States, a process that underscored the economic and social disparities between the two countries. Creating tensions among her multimedia works, Villarreal integrates both environmental geographies in her life, questioning issues of identity, sense of place, longing, and memory. Villarreal holds a MA in Analysis and Management of Contemporary Art from the University of Barcelona, Spain. She studied at the University of North Carolina, the New York School of Visual Arts, and the Art Students League in New York. Select individual exhibitions include the Instituto Cultural de Mexico in Miami, the Coral Gables Museum, the Embassy of Chile in Washington D.C., the Centro Cultural Fatima in Mexico, and the Mexican Consulate in Los Angeles. She participated in Parc Lima, Chaco Chile, and Pinta Miami. She has curated for the Mexican Cultural Institute in Miami, part of the Consulate dedicated to the promotion of Mexican artists in the US, and currently directs art education programs for young audiences in the city of Key Biscayne, Florida. Villarreal’s studio is located at Collective62.
Carol Jazzar
Carol Jazzar is a self-taught interdisciplinary artist who lives and works in El Portal, Florida. Her work is centered on Nature, be it her own, or that of Mother Nature. To realize her artist goals, she sustains two practices, one in the studio, which revolves around collages, drawings and writing; the other outdoors, using photography and site-specific projects. Before fully dedicating her time to her current practices, Jazzar ran a contemporary art gallery out of the garage on her property in Miami's El Portal neighborhood. She showed many local and national artists - including Jen Stark, Farley Aguilar, Shoshanna Weinberger and Ronny Quevedo, among others. Her previous creative incarnation was as a clothing designer under the label Chains Addiction. She has exhibited her work at the Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami, FL, Girls Club Collection in Ft Lauderdale, The Miami-Dade Public Library, The Deering Estate, and the Hollywood Art & Culture Center, FL as well as in private galleries and artist-run alternative spaces. Her work is part of the collections of the Miami-Dade Public Library, Miami International Airport, Related Group and other private collections.
Cultural Arts Programming at the Deering Estate is made possible with the support of the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs and the Cultural Affairs Council, the Miami-Dade County Mayor and Board of County Commissioners, and The Deering Estate Foundation, Inc.
