Coralina Triptych
May 21 - June 10, 2022
Opening May 27, 2022
Solo Show of works by Coralina Rodriguez Meyer
Curated by Ray Zamora
Colonial FL Cultural Heritage Museum
3225 NW 8th ave
Allapattah Miami FL 33127
Colonial FL Cultural Heritage Museum presents a solo exhibition of artist Coralina Rodriguez Meyer’s Mother Mold monuments in the museum's sanctuary garden and Linea Negra photographs in the museum among the colonial reliquaries. Responding to the collection of objects from the Americas acquired by the Catholic church and predominantly Cuban American immigrant families spanning 500 years, the artist offers an immersive installation of documentary sculptures and photographs from her Mama Spa Botanica project.
Colonial Florida Cultural Heritage Museum is located in the historically redlined Alapattah neighborhood of Miami, FL adjacent to Miami’s Design District. The exhibition is curated by Ray Zamora, made possible with support from Chris Piña and the Corpus Christi Catholic church.
The process of creating the Coralina Triptych installation in the museum’s garden sanctuary involved casting in place the procreative effigy figures on pediments between a broken Moche pottery cross and a traditional Mother Maria statuary.
The Mother Mold monuments are fertility effigies created during a full spectrum reproductive and climate health workshop where the artist collaborates with local doulas, botanicas and her LGBTIA+BIPOC neighbors in their domestic habitats. Cast from a combination of pregnant bellies, helping hands and faces, the triptych includes a portrait of the artist combined with her neighbor's birth mask (Catherina Ortiz of Liberty City).
The triptych installation is a culmination of 4 years of accumulated refuse that the artist collected along the seashore in Miami beach with her daughter after climate pulses. Restoring "gifts from Yemaya" along the beach after hurricanes, tropical storms and King tides, the artist heals the littoral litter into a Mother Mold cast. Sculpture ingredients including: dead coral, sponges, chancletas, palm husks, empty alcohol bottles, used condoms, palm stamens shells, straws, discarded textiles such as beach towels and baby blankets. Intimate ephemera and environmental debris is up-cycled then cast into the Mother Mold by layering multiple pours of domestic construction materials including: floor resin, industrial adhesive, interior latex paint, landscape marking paint and spray paint.
