
“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.