Airport Beach

Smack Mellon, Brooklyn, NY. November 20, 2021 – January 2, 2022

Airport Beach (2021) is an immersive installation focusing on events that shaped pre-Stonewall queer life in South and Central Florida, where both my father and I grew up. In 1956, the Florida State Legislature’s conservative majority authorized the creation of the Johns Committee, an investigative body with broad powers. It targeted the “subversive” activities of the civil rights movement, homosexuality and communist political groups, with an overwhelming focus on schools and universities. The subsequent anti-gay agenda shaped the admission policies, hiring practices and curriculum of publicly funded schools, and expanded the of role of police surveillance across Florida. 

In the site-specific installation created for Smack Mellon’s 4,000 square foot main gallery in Brooklyn, New York, I draw on Johns Committee documents from the State Archives of Florida, as well as local news articles and video stills from the Wolfson Archives in Miami. Acknowledging the weight of this history, I asked myself how I could visually intervene in events where visibility was wielded as an act of violence? Through weaving, I developed a process of screen printing on the warp threads of the loom. Under tension, the printed image and text become distorted, using illegibility as way to protect and care for the stories of those impacted by the Johns Committee. 

Bisecting the installation, somewhere between a barrier and a horizon line, is a 30-foot long sculptural table supporting a 86-page accordion book. On the front, the book re-presents a “list of homosexuals” compiled by the Johns Committee. On the back, each page is laminated with suminagashi marbled paper, a process that involves suspending pigment on the surface of water. Under the table are a series of stained-glass book forms, fused with archival video stills of surveillance footage, filmed in 1964, from Miami’s historically gay 21st Street Beach. I used these forms and materials to evoke both the pleasure and danger of the beach as both a public gathering place for the LGBTQ+ community, and a site of surveillance and persecution. Through this installation, I grapple with questions of history, place and memory, while also underscoring the urgency of the present moment, where laws in conservative states like Florida are being passed restricting the rights of LGBTQ+ youth in schools and universities.

This exhibition was supported, in part, by the Greater New York Arts Development Fund of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, administered by Brooklyn Arts Council. I would also like to thank the Textile Arts Center and the Center for Book Arts for production support, and the Wolfson Archives at Miami-Dade College. 

Press

Packard, Cassie. “Your Concise New York Art Guide for November 2021,” Hyperallergic, October 31, 2021.

Exhibition History

Airport Beach, solo exhibition, Smack Mellon, Brooklyn, NY. Curated by Rachel Vera Steinberg and Gabriel de Guzman. November 20, 2021 – January 2, 2022.