FATVillage Leaves A Heavy Impact On The Fort Lauderdale Art Community
(Mock-up for an) Individual History Museum Wall Didactic by misael soto
Sometimes the best exhibition openings are the ones you go to spontaneously. It’s Thursday evening as I am closing up at the museum, and there is a sudden urge to check my email before locking up. It was then when I saw an exhibition opening invitation from Tayina Deravile, the Director of Arts Administrations and Community Engagement at the FATVillage Arts District. Without even fully going through the invitation, my intuition told me to go before it was too late. I’m so glad that I did and was able to take my time when traveling through the space.
Before getting into my review on the group exhibition currently showing at the FATVillage Gallery, I want to shed some light on how I initially came across this arts district. In May 2021, I was invited by a lovely curator named Laura Bustamente to be a part of a group exhibition that highlighted LatinX/Hispanic artists in South Florida. This exhibition was titled, Caminantes and took place within the FATVillage Project Art Space. As a Broward County native, I was excited to be a part of this exhibition and truly see the Fort Lauderdale art community come out and support it. The FATVillage Arts District consists of a whole block of smaller galleries, artist's studios, a music studio, and warehouse spaces for vendors. Every last Saturday of the month, the FATVillage Arts District holds an art walk where crowds of people walk the block and support many local artists and small businesses along the way.
The exhibition I want to highlight from the FATVillage Art Space is titled, Storefront Identity - Fragmented Narratives, curated by Dominique Dennis. As soon as I entered the space, I was given a warm welcome by Dennis. When the curator is approaching you with so much warmth and excitement, that already tells me that this has to be an exquisite show.
Storefront Identity - Fragmented Narratives is a group exhibition designed to explore the complexity of the immigrant experience. After reading the intro text and taking a brief overview of the show before fully going through each installation, I started feeling this wave of nostalgia and comfort. The way that Dennis contextualizes how the traditional cornerstore or bodega often shapes the narratives and cultures associated with immigrant communities was astounding. As a first-generation Afro-Latina artist within my family, I immediately felt at home. Dennis made the great decision to begin the show with a storefront installation by artist Luke Jenkins.
Storefront Retail Space by Luke Jenkins
This installation sits directly next to the gallery windows and pulls you right in just like a bodega on the corner would. In this installation by Jenkins, we can travel through this artist’s history and journey. There is an interesting juxtaposition between the art objects that were indeed for purchase placed next to an old sepia photograph of a couple I presume to be a part of Jenkin’s family tree. This installation truly serves to engage with the nostalgic atmosphere but also reminds the viewer how the cornerstore or bodega holds so much history outside of providing the grocery products we need daily.
Another artist whose work I have written about in my last review also had an installation in this show. I was first introduced to the artwork of Ruth Burotte at her first solo exhibition during Art Basel 2021. In this exhibition, I was able to witness an installation that was very different from the work I had seen from Burotte during her solo show last year. Burotte presents an installation titled, Overlap. This installation contains video documentation shown on an old television. In this video, viewers are in the car with Burotte as she travels through this nostalgic, Caribbean landscape. This video documentation is also projected onto a 3D rendered landscape image similar to the environment shown in the video. Physical objects such as a broom, bowl, and straw hat accompanied this installation, truly bringing the work further to life within this space.
Overlap by Ruth Burotte
What I enjoyed most about this installation was how it immediately brought me feelings of nostalgia and peace. I spent a lot of my childhood visiting my grandparents in Port Antonio, Jamaica, so this scene felt so familiar to me. To see cement block gates, the chair, and straw brooms are not uncommon in Caribbean countries. Burotte brought me back into that space as if I once again riding in my grandfather's truck through Port Antonio. I could almost smell the trees, the ocean, and the smoke-filled scents of the land and food. This installation brings to light how just the simple things on the islands make you feel at home once you see them. I got to speak with Burotte a bit about this installation, and it intrigued me to hear her make note that she had been wanting to dive further into installation-based work that will explore the connections between her identity and upbringing.
For Descendants Yet To Come by Adrienne Chadwick
Another installation that I want to highlight is titled, For Descendants Yet To Come by artist and art administrator Adrienne Chadwick. This installation consists of several archival photos, letters, and transcribed oral histories from Chadwick’s family history that are siphoned through translucent layers of window screens. This installation immediately steals your attention because of how Chadwick has hung each window screen from the ceiling. Thus, this allowed for the work to gain this sense of movement where it not only drives you all around the work to fully travel through Chadwick’s ancestry, but the window screens themselves had movement. It was almost like there was a gust of wind pushing through each screen, bringing viewers in closer and closer. I found it so fascinating how Chadwick had collections of history from her family that even date back to the early 1900s. I was able to speak with Chadwick and learn further about the connections she has made with the members of her ancestry that she had on display. These juxtapositions and connections Chadwick makes throughout this installation push that acknowledgment of past and current generations, as well as she, quotes, “sends a beacon to the descendants yet to come.”
Overall the Storefront Identity - Fragmented Narratives group exhibition takes visitors on a journey of exploring these artists' personal immigrant experiences and how they have found ways to navigate their ancestry as well as their identity. I’ve repeated the word "nostalgic" pretty often throughout this article, but it’s because that’s exactly how this exhibition makes you feel.
I was disheartened to hear that the FATVillage Arts District spaces and warehouses will be knocked down for development, also known as gentrification. It is almost ironic that FATVillage’s last exhibition in that space is the Storefront Identity - Fragmented Narratives group exhibition, with the narrative of preserving one’s history and experiences through traveling in and out of different realities. I do encourage many people to check out this show and attend FATVillage’s last art walk on April 30th before they move on.