Free Art Friday: Nina Surel's "Allegory of Florida"
Sophia Ballesteros, Art Muse Lecturer
Turning into Jade Alley in the Miami Design District, just around the corner from Urs Fischer’s Bus Stop, 2017, resides Nina Surel’s Allegory of Florida. Originally exhibited during Surel’s solo exhibition at Spinello Projects in Fall of 2023, Allegory of Florida is a wall relief composed of over 100 pieces of stoneware ceramic, illustrating native Floridian flora and fauna as well as the human body. Each fragment is hand sculpted and tells part of a story — a leaf, an ear, a bird, a droplet. Together, they recount the rich history of the landscape; how living beings coexist and form bonds with one another to survive and thrive.
Throughout her career, Surel has honored womanhood and its importance to our development and unity as a society. Surel was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1971 and has been living and working in Miami since 2001. In 2016, she founded The Collective 62, a feminine artist-run studio and exhibition space where the relief mural was produced and fired. Her work spans across a variety of mediums such as performance, video, and sculpture — all exploring femininity and nature through different means of expression.
In Allegory of Florida, we see female reproductive organs and genitalia all accompanied by droplets hailing from the sky among other elements of nature. Utilizing the earth as an allegorical reference to the body and vice versa, Surel recognizes the powerful relationship that exists between humanity and nature, as seen in this retelling of the creation story of a given place. While the droplets themselves may represent the essence of life, water, they may also be symbolic of menstruation, and in turn a further expression of fertility and femininity. The relief mural also highlights the role of femininity in the cultivation of land and culture, with Lady Heron present and stewarding the way for this rich landscape.
Fertility is a subject often explored in Surel's work, as seen in her Grávida 2019 performance, which incorporated 400 pounds of red clay and 31 women honoring "primal femininity and women who have experienced their bodies to their fullest potential." Other works such as Core, 2022, and Le Bain, 2023, continue to reference and examine the power of the human body and our ability to create life from within. In Allegory of Florida, we see homages to those who have come to grow and flourish in this state, such as Surel herself and many others who come to call South Florida home, through symbols like the abundant native Florida Beautyberry, Seagrape, and Cocoplum.
This installation is on view in the Miami Design District and presented by Spinello Projects. For a break from the summer heat, treat yourself to an adult confection of liquor infused ice cream from the neighboring Aubi & Ramsa, and enjoy he shady courtyard where you can take in Surel’s ceramic mural for yourself.