Between Islands and Peninsulas Solo show by Amanda Linares

On a platform situated just outside the Bakehouse Art Complex’s Audrey Love Gallery, artist Amanda Linares presents Between Islands and Peninsulas. The installation is comprised of three interconnected sculptural tables, each accompanied by an artist book that represent a part of her journey from Havana to Miami in 2013. Through the use of text, images, and found objects, Linares reflects on her immigrant experience, defined by moments of ambiguity, as a transition from one state of the unknown to another.

Between Islands and Peninsulas has three separate elements, installed as a single table, that function as tangible representations of distinct parts of Linares’ journey: the island of Cuba, the ocean between, and the Florida peninsula. The tables have grid-like patterns the artist utilizes to map the spatial relationships between the different places. The grid becomes a way for Linares to contextualize and organize her personal narrative. On the tables, she places artist books that are chapters of a larger story, like topographical elements in a scattered geography.

The construction and placement of the installation also function to guide the narrative quality of the work. They require the viewer to engage directly and intimately with the installation by walking around the table and stopping to navigate the pages of the books. In a way, the viewer is taken on their own journey, mirroring the one Linares represents in Between Islands and Peninsulas, an immigrant’s story that transports you over time, space, and destinations.

Linares’ varied use of materials allows her to create works that are simultaneously delicate yet durable. She seeks to capture the contradictions of the human condition through materiality. In the artist books Todo Sigue Igual, Agua Salada, and Alternative Realities, she uses seemingly disparate mediums to convey the coexistence of the contradictory emotions and ideas. The artist books, constructed geographies of text and images, evoke the feelings of nostalgia, displacement, and disorientation Linares experienced during her own diaspora.

Saturdays and Sundays, 12PM - 5PM.

Free admission.

Open during the week by appointment only.

Limited per person capacity; masks and social distancing required.

Bakehouse Art Complex.

561 NW 32nd St, Miami

http://www.bacfl.org/exhibitions/betweenislands