In conjunction with International Women’s Day, the Miami Design District unveils a monumental ceramic mural in Jade Alley by the Argentine-American artist Nina Surel.
Comprised of over 100 pieces of stoneware ceramic, Allegory of Florida (2023) is a bas-relief, multipart mural that reimagines Florida as a goddess of feminine fertility. The work is presented by Spinello Projects, where it debut in the context of Surel’s solo exhibition in the Fall 2023.
Using a medium that is both fragile and resistant—a material that shrinks, hardens, scars, and dries with age in the likes of the human body—the artist depicts images of fertility, pregnancy and birth, coalescing with flora and fauna native to the state of Florida, such as herons, beauty berries and seeds. Capturing the relationship between the human body and the earthly matter that sustains it, the mural invites the viewer into a passage through Florida’s esoteric local geography, where past, present, and future blend to tell a story of our experience as corporal beings across time.
Allegory of Florida serves as a testament to the interdependent relationships among all life forms within the enduring Florida ecology, highlighting the feminine divine as a source of knowledge.
Nina Surel (b. 1971, Buenos Aires) is a multidisciplinary artist who explores the relationship between materials and the human body. In 2016, she founded The Collective 62, an artist-run space, and the first feminine collective of Miami. It is a 4,000 square meter space that gathers up to 17 contemporary artists from all over the world. Surel studied Fashion Design at Universidad de Buenos Aires and Stage and Costume Design at the Arts Institute of Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires. Her work has been exhibited widely in institutions, galleries and art fairs both in the United States and South America.
