Home | Department of Reflection

May 19th

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

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.

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.