THE BASS X BAKEHOUSE ART COMPLEX WINDOWS PROJECT
Located at 23rd Street and Collins Avenue in the Walgreens storefront.
Interfering Narratives is a site-specific installation featuring two distinct yet deeply interconnected bodies of work by interdisciplinary artist Gabriela Fernandez. Through the interplay of light, materiality, and memory, Fernandez explores how histories are constructed, layered, and reimagined over time. By using photographic archives as both subject and medium, the artist weaves together mosaic and cyanotype processes into a singular reflection on migration, place, and the fragmented nature of memory.
Along the 23rd Street windows, Fernandez constructs intricate mosaics using 35mm slides sourced from family and friends. Cut and spliced together, these mosaics mimic the aesthetic of stained glass, presenting a dynamic vision of the Caribbean as a temporal land – one shaped by shifting histories, transient identities, and evolving geographies. Fernandez invokes the idea that the Caribbean is not a fixed or static entity, but rather one that exists in a state of flux—constantly changing due to migration, colonial histories, ecological transformations, and cultural exchanges.
Installed directly onto the vitrine windows and illuminated by 15 light boxes, these mosaics project their imagery onto the surrounding environment, echoing the language of advertisements and billboards that once framed Florida as a tropical paradise. By incorporating negatives from immigrants who have made Miami their home, Fernandez challenges and subverts traditional notions of place, complicating the narrative of belonging and the realities of the spaces we inhabit.
In the artist’s words:
"Exploring these lands, where economies are built on temporality and have since become permanent homes for many—especially in Miami—I juxtapose handcrafted images that evoke the idea of transient spaces with the very real, lasting homes that have emerged within them. The mosaics echo the aesthetics of traditional stained glass, while others splice together imagery reminiscent of Miami’s iconic postcards from the 1970s and ’80s. Illuminated like the towering billboards that once framed these places as distant escapes, the mosaics reveal how immigrant culture is already deeply woven into the fabric of South Florida."
On Collins Avenue, Fernandez installed large cyanotype works on fabric, which similarly engage with ideas of place, home, and ritual. Just as the mosaics rely on the fragmentation and reordering of photographic slides, the cyanotypes embody a parallel process of deconstruction and reconstruction. Using old family photographs as their source material, these works capture intimate moments—portraits, objects of significance, and domestic spaces—printed onto fabric. The sun’s exposure during the cyanotype process metaphorically parallels the warmth of a mother nurturing a child, reinforcing the idea that memory is both personal and collectively inherited.
Interfering Narratives prompts viewers to reconsider the constructed images that shape our collective understanding of home and heritage. The shifting projections of the mosaics—ephemeral and ever-changing—mirror the solar process of the cyanotypes, both embracing the instability of memory and the fluidity of identity. By repurposing personal archives within a public space, Fernandez not only reclaims these intimate histories but also invites us to reflect on the ways in which our environments are framed, commodified, and reimagined over time.
About the artist
Gabriela Fernandez (b. 1998, Havana, Cuba) is an interdisciplinary artist based in Miami, Florida. Their work focuses on exploring the existence of an identity with the intersection of both trauma and nostalgia in contemporary language through performance, installation, book-making, and lens-based techniques. Fernandez has exhibited both locally and nationally, notably in Franconia Sculpture Park (Shafer, MN) as an Emerging Artist Resident. They were selected for the Bakehouse Art Complex Summer Open program in 2022 and as part of Yale’s Norfolk Program in 2019. Fernandez graduated with a BFA from New World School of the Arts in 2020.
About The Bass x Bakehouse Art Complex Windows Project
The Walgreens Windows Project is a collaboration between The Bass and Bakehouse. Featuring site-specific projects by emerging and local artists on a rotating basis, the projects represent the shared missions of the Miami-based arts organizations to support art that engages, challenges, and educates. The project is supported by Walgreens.
About The Bass
The Bass is Miami Beach’s contemporary art museum. Focusing on exhibitions of international contemporary art, The Bass presents mid-career and established artists reflecting the spirit and international character of Miami Beach. The Bass seeks to expand the interpretation of contemporary art by incorporating disciplines of contemporary culture, such as design, fashion, and architecture, into the exhibition program. The exhibition program encompasses a wide range of media and artistic points of view that bring new thought to the diverse cultural context of Miami Beach.
