NEW PORTALS AND SPIRITUAL ASSISTANCE UNLOCKED IN NORTH MIAMI

Por: Elvia Rosa Castro

At some point in history, many traditions were emptied of their original meaning and distorted. Suddenly, sweeping became part of an obstinate ritual from which women were specifically supposed to liberate themselves. Thus, gender ideology plundered the original value of several practices whose symbolic resonances transcended any ideological manipulation or power dynamics.

Copperbridge Foundation, based in North Miami, brought together in its space two magnificent exhibitions connected by a profound respect for Mother Nature and the holistic nature of certain so-called everyday practices that, in essence, carry deep spiritual roots. Brooms Caress the Earth, by Brazilian artist Monica Carvalho—accompanied by the photographic essay of Murillo Meirelles—and Whispers of the Wind: The Sacred Feather Fan, by Mexican artist David Gutiérrez, have created a repository of ancestral memory through a colossal contemporary visual and conceptual approach.

Range of carefully chosen earth tones as the background for each piece, a premeditated accumulation of objects on one side and deliberately empty spaces in search of balance and rhythm on the other, make the Copperbridge galleries a multitemporal setting, where ancestral worldviews are revealed through a contemporary, refined, and sophisticated museographic design. Far removed from stereotypical or fetishized theatricality, both exhibitions ultimately capture that tension between progress and sustainability, active memory and visual archive, the ephemeral and the perishable—between the sacred and the seemingly ordinary.

Bonus: they do so without resorting to pamphleteering militancy, combative rhetoric, or the constraining notion of “what should be.” On the contrary, this is a proposal not only coherent and organic—literally so—but built upon immense respect, upon that empathetic platform that has been called an “ecology of affections.”

Brooms Caress the Earth and Whispers of the Wind: The Sacred Feather Fan were created respectively from two objects—the broom and the fan—that not only share formal similarities, but are also tools whose energetic vibrations and symbolic connotations often go unnoticed in contemporary life. These are “charged” sculptures and installations. They refresh the environment, act as vehicles of introspection and self-absorption, and connect us with the “other.” They are guardians of inner peace. The cadence and rhythm they require to be wielded are identical to the pendulum’s movement that enables regression, hence their restorative and therapeutic nature.

If Copperbridge, as a community space, has from its very beginnings been animated by the notion of religare (communion, connection, …), by processes of healing and individual transcendence through connection and pantheism, then these exhibitions would be its visual statement. If—as I have known for years—it has always sought what is unique and different, what modern arrogance typically discards yet remains undeniably authentic, genuine, and of high poetic and aesthetic flight, then with these exhibitions it has not only achieved that, but has also set the bar high and established an excellent precedent for future projects.

Coda: I find it wonderfully meaningful that I wrote this review on the extraordinary day of the well-known 11:11 Portal, a day of universal connection and alignment, filled with mysticism—ideal for expressing gratitude, manifesting intentions, and shaking off the weight of the ego to fully enjoy intuition.