MIA Galleries presents Future Pacific and Garden Portals Two short documentary films by Lauren Shapiro and Dr. Shireen Rahimi On View through September 30, 2022 South Terminal, Concourse J, 2nd Level, Gate J7 (post-security)
Lauren Shapiro South Florida-born and raised artist and master ceramicist Lauren Shapiro finds inspiration within the biodiversity of coastal and marine environments. She explores these fragile systems through sculptures that exist primarily in the public realm. Her work draws connections between science and craft, often collaborating with ecologists and architects to research, develop and build her work. Shapiro’s projects incorporate hand-formed clay tiles and digitally fabricated molds as friezes and systems of classical architecture to reimagine contemporary buildings overtaken by flora and marine life.
For Future Pacific and Garden Portals, the artist invited the public to participate during open community sessions by affixing clay replicas of plants and corals onto large-scale armatures that poetically exist between construction and demolition. During these activations, participants become confronted with understanding their role in the deterioration of these environments. With her work overall, Shapiro aims to cultivate climate resilience, encourage environmental advocacy, and foster a dialog about potential solutions for living in harmony with our natural world.
Video stills from Future Pacific, 2020, courtesy of the artist
Future Pacific Lauren Shapiro Dr. Shireen Rahimi
2020 4:34 min. Produced by Lightpalace Productions Future Pacific is a short film by Miami-based artist Lauren Shapiro and Dr. Shireen Rahimi that documents Shapiro’s project and immersive exhibition from 2020, also titled Future Pacific. The immersive installation consists of large-scale structures covered in 15,000 pounds of clay textures sourced from the skeletons of coral reefs. For one month, Shapiro worked with the help of over 300 local volunteers, offering clay-molding workshops to cover seven life-sized architectural structures in the gallery space at the Bakehouse Art
Complex in Miami, Florida. Through Future Pacific, Shapiro aims to cultivate environmental stewardship and provide a platform for the scientists who work to preserve and protect endangered marine ecosystems. Future Pacific was supported by a National Science Foundation grant (#1924281) to Dr. Nyssa Silbiger, California State University Northridge, Silbiger Labs, and Bakehouse Art Complex.
Garden Portals Lauren Shapiro Dr. Shireen Rahimi
2021 2:00 min. Produced by Lightpalace Productions In Garden Portals, Shapiro invites the community to cast native and exotic flora into clay textures on modular ceramic tiles and creates a site-specific monumental wall sculpture for Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden in Miami, Florida. Temporarily installed at Fairchild’s Tropical Plant Conservatory and Rare Plant House, Shapiro’s Garden Portals highlights how Florida’s unique ecology supports a variety of native and exotic plant species while drawing public awareness to the beauty and fragility of our local environment.
Garden Portals was supported by a Knight Arts Challenge Award presented to the artist, Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden, and with the support of the MiamiDade County Department of Cultural Affairs and the Cultural Affairs Council, the Miami-Dade County Mayor, and the Board of County Commissioners.
Video stills from Garden Portals, 2021, courtesy of the artist
About the Artist Lauren Shapiro lives and works in Miami, Florida. Shapiro received a Master of Fine Arts in Ceramics from the University of Miami (2016) and a BFA from Florida Atlantic University (2009). Her work experiments with art’s possibility to affect change and cultivate a broad awareness of our environment. Working alongside ecologists to understand and narrate nature, she merges ceramics and technology to create sculptural installations. Selected solo exhibitions include “Future Pacific’’ (2021) at Bakehouse Art Complex in Miami, Florida, “Garden Portals” (2021) at Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden in Miami, Florida, and “Fragile Terrains’’ (2018) at Bianca Boekel Galeria, in São Paulo, Brazil. Selected group exhibitions include “Design Miami” (2021) with Todd Merrill Studio in Miami Beach, Florida, “Powder Hounds’’ (2020) at the Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Aspen, Colorado, and “Projektraum M54” (2017) in Basel, Switzerland. Shapiro received awards from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts (2019), Knight Foundation (2020), Awesome Foundation (2020), Oolite Arts (2021), and Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs and Art in Public Places. Shapiro is currently an artist-in-residence for a National Science Foundation grant awarded to marine ecologists at California State University, Northridge. Her work is in the Jorge M. Pérez Collection.
laurenshapiroart.com