Miami’s Jenielift art gallery is currently hosting Latin American Art Museum, Department of Parrots by School of Art + Art History Professor Sergio Vega. The show presents Vega’s installations A Summer Garden and Genesis According to Parrots.
This endeavor is intended as a continuation of the work initiated by Marcel Broodthaers' Museum of Modern Art, Department of Eagles. Instead of focusing on eagles, Vega explores the parrot as a symbol for the colonized subject and its uncertain fate. Advocating the role of the parrot as the allegory of an emerging post-colonial avant-garde, Vega explains:
"Perhaps because I saw the seed of a Dadaist in its attitude, a playful, mischievous manner of dismantling the logic of language and a relentless predilection for the profane, that I became interested in the parrot and its dramatic potential as the main character of a story... I sense in the parrot the backbone of a true revolutionary. After all, the revolution would be a Dionysian event, or would not be at all..."
Jenielift, which opened in the spring of 2015, is an alternative exhibition space ran by UF SA+AH alumna Marla Rosen (BFA Sculpture ’14) and New World School of the Arts alumnus Eddie Negron (BFA Painting ’13). The space focuses on innovative procedures and thinking with the goal to create an environment for artists, writers and musicians to make and exhibit work that will contribute to an international critical contemporary dialogue.
Latin American Art Museum, Department of Parrots is the third exhibition presented by Jenielift. Explaining how Vega’s artwork is both critical and integral to the Miami art scene, Rosen expresses:
“Over the years, he has been contributing to the phenomenon of history, art and the exhibition while teaching generations and participating in contemporaneity and our community. It’s important to us to continue to support and present particular artworks that amount to such realizations throughout the Miami region and internationally.”
Latin American Art Museum, Department of Parrots opened on December 3, 2015, and continues through February 6. For more information about Vega’s show and Jenielift, click here.
