But That Life Obliges Them Over and Over Again To Give Birth To Themselves, Christine Cortes, 2021.
Strange Natures
Christine Cortes, Lee Pivnik, and Zoe Schweiger
Curated by Krys Ortega, Curatorial & Public Programs Coordinator
Strange Natures features the work of three artists exploring themes of communal care, loss, resilience, and tenderness through the lens of South Florida’s ecology. While the artists use different mediums, they all engage in a process of world-building that feels both of and beyond our natural environment.
The exhibition imagines how our connection to land will change depending on our collective response, whether care or indifference, to the exploitation of our natural ecosystems. By contemplating this relationship within the context of South Florida’s landscape, the artists explore versions of reality that oscillate between dystopia and utopia, present and future, the familiar and strange.
Join us for the opening reception of Strange Natures on April 10th from 6 to 9 PM.
About the Artists:
Christine Cortes
Christine Cortes (she/they) is a first generation Colombian-American artist based in Miami, FL.
As a photo-based artist, they are interested in exploring alternative and non-traditional processes of image-making, image-printing, book-making, print-making, and installing images.
“My images, taken in 35mm film, are rooted in “documentary photography,” inspired by literary and philosophical frameworks, including magical realism and deconstructivism that allow me to investigate ‘truth’, identity, and certainty through fragmentation. Using experimental methods of photography and printing, I am able to observe and represent different versions of ‘reality’. My process is a physical manifestation of concepts, translated through the continuous layering of images.
My interest in transparencies, double exposures, reflections, and layering allows me to investigate the sentimentality of connectivity shared between humans. My photographs and the alternative imagery that is created through experimental processes exist as archival vessels, allowing me to create parallels between my identity and my environment.”
Lee Pivnik
Lee Pivnik is an artist living in Miami, Florida. Working across disciplines, he takes inspiration from living systems and other species to imagine a future based on mutualistic relationships instead of extractive economies. Permeating his practice is the idea of entanglement - the touching, changing, mutating relationships between species and landscapes. Through these intimacies, worlds arise —worlds of decay and degradation or verdant flourishing. His drawings, sculptures, and installations share this relational quality, referencing fungal networks, epiphytic plants, and emergent animal architectures that inhabit South Florida.
Zoe Schweiger
Zoe paints with a sense of urgency, distorting and blurring her subjects, mirroring the fluidity of her queer experience in a world increasingly defined by rising temperatures and environmental fragility. Zoe’s practice delves into intimate moments between loved ones with a warm, saturated color palette. The abstraction of her figures evokes the heavy humidity, persistent flooding, and sweltering heat that saturate Miami—where even the air seems to pulse with its unique rhythm.
Through this, Zoe aims to reflect how rain and water blur and obfuscate reality, reflecting how forces beyond our collective control shape our lived experiences. Zoe’s practice has evolved into a means of interweaving this urgency of climate change looming over South Florida and the resilience of a beloved queer community.
For information about the artwork, please refer to the exhibition checklist linked HERE. To express interest in purchasing an artwork, please refer to the contact information of each artist, linked in the exhibition checklist.
This exhibition is supported by:
Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs and the Cultural Affairs Council and, National Endowment for the Arts.