The Bass Museum of Art, in collaboration with the Miami Beach Botanical and ArtCenter/South Florida, presents Nayda Collazo-Llorens: Pleasure, Fear and the Pursuit of Happiness through November, 2013.
This public textual intervention, created by the artist in New York City and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, consists of the placement of a series of texts on some of the Miami Beach Botanical Garden's pedestrian walkways. The texts are based on thoughts gathered by local Miami Beach residents and visitors.
With this project, the artist seeks to explore the way in which information is perceived and processed, engaging concepts such as navigation, language, motion, sound, and memory. Her intervention brings to the public a textual landscape that accompanies them as they walk through the gardens.
The collection of texts involved site-specific research and the compilation of print material and casual conversations, by means of cards with questions distributed to visitors in the lobby of the Bass Museum and during Beats After Sunset, between October and November of 2012. Once the answers were edited, the text functions as a collection of disparate voices pointing towards a specific geographic-cultural context that offers a fluid poetic space for their interpretation.
The title of the project, Pleasure, Fear and the Pursuit of Happiness, responds to the large themes found during the research and compilation process. It is part of "tc: temporary contemporary," a wide-ranging program of temporary and public art in the city initiated by the Bass Museum of Art in association with the City of Miami Beach.