PUBLIC: Tan Lejos y Tan Cerca Exhibition2022-10-06T13:12:34-04:00
tan lejos y tan cerca 2

“Blue Table with Banana Leaf” is an installation that retools the intimate, the domestic and the

spatial aspects of eating– at a dinner table, on a banana leaf, and the importance of food in

material and in social life. The banana leaf is the backbone to many Latin American and

Caribbean dishes, used for folding, steaming and serving. The plantain plant is a major food

staple as well as an all-season staple food with a role that has linked the ‘tropical colonies’ to

that known as the banana republic

Art installation by

Leslie Gomez-Gonzales, BFA (FIU)

Joaquin Stacey-Calle, BFA (FIU)

Amaris Cruz-Guerrero, BA (FIU)

Amaris Cruz-Guerrero

Amaris Cruz-Guerrero is a Nicaraguan-Puerto Rican multidisciplinary artist, cook, and educator

that lives and works in Miami, Florida.

Cruz-Guerrero draws her artistic practice around her ecological, domestic and ancestral

landscape. Her work engages with stories, mysticism, folklore, and the “in-betweenness” or la

tierra entre medio, of her heritage. She describes this concept as nepantla, a Nahuatl word

which means “in the middle of it”.

She explores female exhaustion within the familial sphere, collective and transcendental

memory and language “y los senderos míticos”. She combines these intimate experiences with

traditional tools for communication within her Mesoamerican and Caribbean heritage.

Cruz-Guerrero creates memorialized moments in time utilizing sculpture, poetry and

performance.

Amaris is an alum of Florida International University, where she graduated with a BA in Art, and

a minor in Art History and Religious Studies.

For more information about Amaris, click here.

Joaquin Stacey-Calle

Joaquin Stacey-Calle was born in Quito, Ecuador and lived there until he was 14 years old. He

moved with his family to Miami in 2014 where his interest for art evolved from hobby to career.

In 2018 he started his studies in fine arts at Florida International University with a focus on

painting and video. He is expected to graduate in 2022 with a bachelor in fine arts, and a minor

in art history and marketing.

His work deals directly with nostalgia, the fragility of memory, and how incredibly fast time can

pass. Stacey-Calle uses oil painting as a way of slowing down in our fast-paced-technology

driven world– it is a way of contrasting and balancing. In his work he references his own

pictures, his dad’s lifelong documentation of his family, and old photos from the family archive.

Stacey-Calle links distinct images from different times to form symbolic narratives and

meanings; the juxtaposition of these would have never happened if it was not in this context. In

his artistic process he challenged his attachment to objects by erasing, destroying and

permanently covering his work. This creates negative spaces that generate a sense of intrigue

and curiosity that welcomes viewers to explore beyond the top layer of paint. Stacey-Calle’s

work creates different narratives by recontextualizing images of his personal and family’s history

in order to question and push what identity means.

For more information about Joaquin, click here.

Leslie Gomez-Gonzalez

Leslie Gomez-Gonzalez (she/they, b.1998, New York, NY) is a multidisciplinary artist that

currently lives and works in Miami, FL

Her practice explores daily routines and regulatory acts of bodily care (bathing, menstruation,

eating, dressing, etc). Working with their own body, as a site and as a given homeostatic

system, Leslie explores the cyclical spaces between tension and relief; ultimately seeking to

exist within a fluid space that can always be reimagined.

Clay’s regenerative and collective nature fosters the exploration of the dynamic between the

fragility, resilience, and memory of the body, a process that is further translated through

photography, video, sculpture and drawing. Leslie creates collections of all parts of the processclay

residue, photos, videos, scraps of paper, etc- as a means to recontextualize, repurpose,

and archive the entire lives of these materials that are endlessly charged with everything and

everyone they’ve held.

Leslie is an alum of Florida International University, where she graduated with a BFA in Studio

Art, and a minor in Art History. In 2021, she was a participant in the Chautauqua Visual Arts

Residency. She currently lives and works in Miami, FL.

For more information about Leslie, click here.

College of Communication, Architecture + The Arts
Modesto A. Maidique Campus
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PH: 305-535-1463 |
E-Mail: janthomp@fiu.edu