The Catalina Hotel & Beach Club, 1732 Collins Ave
Provisional Obstruction (Miami Beach) continues a collaborative series of works between Miami-based artist misael soto and New Delhi-based artist Ayesha Singh, which began in Chicago in 2017. The work employs dysfunctionally-installed scaffolding, and banner-sized architectural and historical imagery, both temporary and pragmatic objects and structures that are typically secondary and subservient to what is traditionally seen as more permanent objects and structures such as buildings. The public installations deviate passersby viewpoints and divert foot traffic along the sidewalk, becoming catalysts for conversation on shared ideas of stability birthed from objects that connote impermanence.
Ayesha Singh
Ayesha Singh’s practice interrogates political agendas, social hierarchies and subconscious value systems placed in architectural decisions that shape cities and homes. Her interdisciplinary works highlight movement and forced displacement to emphasize cultural hybridity and reveal places of erasure against current puritan ideologies. Through video, sculpture, installation, performance and drawings that examine the malleability of public and private space, she creates sites of discourse and record. The works explore notions of authenticity, authority and agency in relation to belonging. Singh is also the founder of Art Chain India- a peer support movement for visual artists living and working in the subcontinent.
misael soto
misael’s practice interrogates and subverts contextually associated everyday objects and systemic roles, disrupting and manipulating space, systems, and frameworks. The publicly accessible, time-based, and ephemeral work involves interventions made upon existing objects, performative activations, institutional mediations, and is, more often than not, a combination of these elements. Pointing to truths found within the equivocal and disturbing presumed permanence are foundational goals. The novelty and uncanny nature of these situations, and the vulnerability asked from viewers, aligns their attention with the present and reveals circumstantial actualities leading to dialogue around critical contemporary concerns. Born in Puerto Rico (1986) and based in Miami, misael was the first ever Art in Public Life Resident with the City of Miami Beach where they founded the Department of Reflection, a post-governmental agency bringing new perspectives to important local conversations.
