Cuna Humana en la Hamaca Yemaya (Vanessa de South Miami after Surfside)

A fertility effigy rests in the palm husks of a Chinese Fan Palm crown within the sanctuary garden at Colonial Florida Cultural Heritage Museum during a solo show of Coralina Rodriguez Meyer's Mother Mold monuments installation for the AIM Biennial Miami 2023-24. 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 above the viewer's horizon line, beyond 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 with iridescent sunlight to restored coral growing from an aqua and lime green reclining figure atop a palm trunk. Recalling the syncretic Yemaya/ Virgen de la Regla deities of the Americas, the figure is visible by the dangling foot, belly and breast between frond stems and the splintered sky.

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.

Cuna Humana en la Hamaca Yemaya (Vanessa de South Miami despues de Surfside)
Human cradled by Yemaya's Hammock (Vanessa from South Miami After Surfside)
2018-2023

Medium
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

Cuna Humana en la Hamaca Yemaya (Vanessa de South Miami after Surfside) 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.