February 5, 2026
Concrete Pedestal (for the University of Southern Maine)
Crewe Center for the Arts, University of Southern Maine, Portland, ME
Taking course over the better part of a day with a durational performative installation, and remaining as a temporary public installation, “Concrete Pedestal” takes the humble material, perhaps the most ubiquitous and anthropocentric of modern inventions, as a starting point for communal meaning making. Stretching the subject’s material possibilities to failure via a Sisyphean cycle of construction, destruction, and reconstruction, each new pedestal is made using the remains of the pedestal that came before combined with fragments of found concrete gathered from the surrounding city, as well as other diverse contributed ingredients. With each new casting the pedestal becomes more precarious, weakened by its own material history and that of the surrounding concrete environs. Compounded by the physical weakening of the laborer/performer, the finished installation is both an archive and a sort of (anti-)monument, an empty pedestal left to crumble under its own material and historical weight.
Read the Exhibition Essay: On Deterritorialized Relationality by Kat Zagaria Buckley
May 19, 2026
BFI presents:
No longer stuck, but still… in the middle with you.
One-Night Exhibition of Collaborative Performative Works
at the Miami Beach Botanical Garden
Participating artists: AG, Jenna Balfe, Dana Bassett, Domingo Castillo, Mie Frederikke Fischer Christensen, Jacqueline Falcone, Liz Ferrer, Dennis Fuller, Angel Garcia, Loni Johnson, Tara Long, Najja Moon, Ayesha Singh, Bow Ty, Angelica Vergel, and Sue Welch.
When I was younger
So much younger than today
Never needed anybody’s help in any way
But now these days are gone
I’m not so self assured
Now I find I’ve changed my mind
Opened up the door
-The Beatles
A moment of existential disorientation and deep sadness, turned into a year of collective therapy, collaborative creative problem-solving, and now, a one-night exhibition of original performative works by 17 artists. The Department of Reflection presents “No longer stuck, but still… in the middle with you,” a process-based reflection on aging and community in a time of increased urgency. Crafted and curated by DoR’s director misael soto, it is the culmination of a process soto began over a year ago when they invited close friends, chosen family, and recent collaborators to join them for intimate one-on-one interviews or “Performance Consultations.” During these “help me help you” casual interview sessions, participants were asked to “aid in mutual reflection, bonding, and compassion, [and to] pointedly facilitate a mutual understanding of [themselves] and [their] relationship to several topics related to time, age, humanity, intimacy, creativity, and fulfillment.” From these interviews, soto subsequently crafted bespoke performances, each “tailored to the interviewee’s expressed attributes, abilities, desires, and proclivities.”
A celebration of life, love, friendship, and chosen family, but also internal (eternal?) crisis, bittersweet mortality, and inevitable rest/death, the exhibition will take place 11 days after soto’s 40th birthday—a significant mile-marker and reflection point. Expect a night of intimate live performance art and the premier viewings of short films and video documentation, all curated throughout the grounds of the Miami Beach Botanical Garden.
Part of a 15-year artistic practice grounded in the belief that they—and any artist—can’t do it on their own, this exhibition is an embodied curatorial expression of what soto believes in most: the unequivocal power of community, especially in trying times, over time. Community-building as a time-based practice.
Photographed by Chantal Lawrie
Excerpt from misael soto’s Script:
Some might look at the conceptual underpinnings of tonight and think: “how egotistical!” or “how shallow and unserious!” or “that’s glorified nepotism!”
But, I’d ask in response: Is this not what those in positions of power have done for years? Well, except of course with the major difference that you and every artist in this show and all of you… are not in traditional positions of power. You might have a job that elevates you a bit, or enough connections to fool you and some around you from time to time, but… like the same 1,000 or so bucks that we all Venmo each other back and forth as needed throughout the year… we’re all just sharing the same limited amount of power down at the bottom.
You could say all of the artists in today’s show are chosen family… I even used the term in the press release for tonight… but in some ways this family was chosen for me. Chosen through the shared desire to create. We really did find each other doing this thing called art.
It might all be cringe, but I’ve run out of fucks to give. For me, tonight is about realignment. A reminder of the foundational purposes of art. To bring us together. To remind us, especially our nearest and dearest, of who we truly are and how much we love and care for one another? Art is to care. And ultimately, I care too much to not.
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