Non-profit art exhibition space Locust Projects unveiled three new exhibitions earlier this month: Leo Castañeda’s “Herramientas (Levels & Bosses),” Zac Hacmon’s “Mia” and the group exhibition “Sound, Stories” by Ania Freer, Helina Metaferia and Ambrose Rhapsody Murray.
Leo Castañeda: “Herramientas (Levels & Bosses)”
MAIN GALLERY
“Herramientas (Levels & Bosses)” is multimedia artist Leo Castañeda’s immersive take on the interconnection between landscape and technology. The exhibit is centered around a video game that brings viewers through art in the mode of paintings, virtual reality experience, sculptural furniture, immersive video and wall drawings. Castañeda is an artist and game designer residing in Miami, where he is a professor of 3-D animation at Florida International University and New World School of the Arts. His work fuses gaming, virtual reality, film, interactive sculpture and video games to evoke otherworldly images across form and texture in digital environments. The landscapes of this specific exhibit pull from Castañeda’s interests in Latin America, Columbia, the Brazilian Amazon and South Florida.
Digital render of the Herramientas (Levels & Bosses) exhibit
Zac Hacmon: “Mia”
PROJECT ROOM
Intimate conversations and modern cultural resistance come together in Brooklyn-based Zac Hacmon’s sculpture, video and sound installation. Hacmon’s work on the exhibit involved collaboration with Alexa, a transgender woman who fled from her home country of Nicaragua in 2018 to seek asylum in New York City. The show aims to depict Alexa’s life through the narration of intimate conversations, aided by a fictional space “where cultures and diversity meet in one place.” Hacmon, whose work explores socio-political conflicts through art, met Alexa through the RDJ Refugee Shelter, a non-profit New York City organization serving asylum seekers and refugees. The exhibition’s name is in honor of Alexa’s daughter Mia, who still resides in Nicaragua.
Zac Harmon’s “Mia,” photo by Etienne Frossard
Group Exhibition: “Sound, Stories”
PROJECT ROOM
“Sounds, Stories” asks the questions: “What is contained in the language of the people?” “What are the narratives, sounds and identities inhabiting the landscape?” Videos by Ania Freer, Ambrose Rhapsody Murray and Helina Metaferia employ aspects of ancestry and feminist history in combination with locations across the African Diaspora to rethink the crossover between cultural identity and space. Freer and Murray’s videos range in shoot location from Jamaica to North Carolina, while Metaferia’s performance in a “white cube” space nods to former points in anti-colonial and civil rights history to critique structures of power and privilege. The exhibition is guest curated by Heike Dempster.
Still from Ambrose Rhapsody Murray’s film “Deep Waters” made in collaboration with Logan Lynette, Heather Lee, and SpiritHouse Inc.
Locust Projects is Miami’s longest-running nonprofit alternative art space, formed in 1998 in a Wynwood warehouse. The organization recently announced plans to move early next year into a new 8,000-square-foot location at 297 NE 67th in a warehouse district of Miami’s Little River neighborhood, where they will aim to offer more commission-based exhibition opportunities and educational programming.
Locust Projects is open between 11 a.m.- 5 p.m. from Wednesday to Saturday. “Herramientas (Levels & Bosses),” “Mia” and “Sound, Stories” will show until Nov. 5, 2022.
