“Sand Relief”
Participatory Artwork on Miami Beach
(2025)
Since March, the artist has collaborated with ArtSail to lead a series of community workshops engaging youth from Breakthrough Miami, Overtown Youth Center, and The Motivational Edge. These sessions invited participants to investigate the architectural landscape of Miami and its evolving relationship to the ocean.
Emerging from this research, the artist designed a series of sculptural rakes inspired by the ornamental language of Miami’s Art Deco heritage—tools conceived to inscribe ephemeral gestures into the sand.
Sand Relief activates these tools in a participatory performance along the shoreline, where community members etched fluid, temporary patterns into the earth. These transitory markings, soon dissolved by the incoming tide, gesture toward the fragile intersection of the city’s built environment and its natural surroundings.
A video documenting the work will premiere in June for World Ocean Day, offering a meditation on memory, impermanence, and the collective imprint we leave on the planet.
Photo: Alex Markow
