Abuela, Ija Desnuda Surgio del Sacrificio Triangulo Bermuda (Museo de la Cultura Colonial de Florida)
Naked Indian Fetched from the Bermuda Triangle (Colonial FL Cultural Heritage Museum)

A photograph from the Apariciones Virgen Gruta series, Abuela, Ija Desnuda Surgio del Sacrificio Triangulo Bermuda (Museo de la Cultura Colonial de Florida) depicts a respite extant resting in a verdant retablo nested the sanctuary garden at Colonial FL Cultural Heritage Museum in the redlined Alappattah, Miami neighborhood hovering above tide lines. Situated within the Catholic Archdioses' collection of artifacts conquered from the Americas and Caribbean, the Mother Mold monument fertility effigy is a site specific installation for the AIM Biennial Miami 2023-24 offers material refuse as maternal refuge. A coral cast figure composed of 4 years of collecting trash, intimate waste and environmental ephemera from our respective neighborhoods in South Miami and Miami Beach FL is in repose within the Fishtail Palm tree fronds to welcome viewers of the Catholic Archdioses' art collection in the historically redlined Alapattah Miami neighborhood. The fertility effigy restores dignity and divinity to the refuse materials formed in the shape of a pregnant body whose resting pose and coral texture is wafted by flittering fishtail light. A wet resin surface bonds to restored coral onto a pregnant body in recline. Departing from the stiffened Dolphin Dorado taxidermied bodies popular in commercial fishing piers in the Caribbean, the figure's pose and marine layer look are cradled by the rustling frond frame, whose blinding sky beyond serves as a pillow for the exhausted effigy figure.

Mother Mold monument fertility effigy cast of Vanessa from Miami FL on July 30, 2021 in the artist's studio a month after the neighboring Surfside Building collapse during a Mama Spa Botanica workshop. The mummy is a monument to survivors of conflicting climate and reproductive health crisis in America made in collaboration with procreative neighbors. Littoral litter collected by the artist along the Miami Beach sea shore after moon tides, tropical storms, hurricanes and man made climate disasters such as the Surfside Building collapse are cast into the form of a reclining pregnant body. Intimate ephemera, environmental waste are cast in domestic construction materials to reconstruct the identity of a Brazilian American mother and her reproductive health allies including her family narrative.

Hailing from Sao Paolo Brazil, Vanessa's mixed race family was part of the artist's "pod" during the global Covid pandemic quarantine in Miami Beach, FL. Recovering from the intersecting crisis, the mother was a therapist sharing her comadre's mourning (also pregnant during the Surfside building collapse in the adjacent Champlain North tower) during the Mama Spa Botanica workshop.

Apariciones: Virgen Gruta (2020-present) photographs render fertility effigy altars of Mother Mold monuments in their fecund habitat to reclaim American material refuse as a vernacular, maternal refuge. Venerating entropic life and death cycle rituals across indigenous equatorial cultivars, the vibrant retablos are apparitions of vulnerable, yet unvanquished interior psychic landscapes overcoming assimilation and species collapse. Welcoming and warning viewers to the fabled biography of plantation labor farms and botanica pharmacies, the works excavate biological impacts on melanated, chosen families whose endangered plantology wisdom transgresses health and habitat disparities. Digging in personal and global South and equatorial archives over 2 decades, the artist renders the geopolitics of gender, displacement and land sovereignty emerging within the syncretic sites in their familiar, queer and quaint, endemic or exotic landscape.

Reconstructed into a Virgen Gruta Aparicion, the fertility effigy is composed of intimate waste, environmental ephemera cast in domestic construction materials including: human hair, coral, sponges, spirit bottles, seeds, Foxtail Palm stamens, used covid medical gloves, construction gloves, condoms, wood stud, neon lace window curtain, sand from Surfside, nail salon glitter, spray paint, exterior house paint, building insulation foam, gypsum plaster, metal lathe, industrial floor resin

Abuela, Ija Desnuda Surgio del Sacrificio Triangulo Bermuda (Vanessa de South Miami) has been included in solo exhibitions in NYC & Miami including The Immigrant Artist Biennial 2023 at Cuchifritos Gallery and the AIM Biennial Miami 2023-24 at Colonial FL Cultural Heritage Museum.