“South Florida Cultural Consortium”
Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami
(2026)

Lauren Shapiro’s Storm at Sea (2026) is an inset ceramic relief consisting of modular tiles textured with sculptural marine and crystalline forms. This work marks a shift in palette from the softer blues, greens, and whites of her earlier installations to darker, more turbulent tones, referencing canonical works of Romanticism like Théodore Géricault’s Raft of the Medusa and J.M.W. Turner’s Fire at Sea. In doing so, Shapiro aligns her practice with a lineage of artists grappling with human vulnerability within the natural world.

Integrating ecology, architecture, and digital technologies, Shapiro creates site-responsive ceramic environments that merge historical craft traditions with contemporary processes to translate dynamic ecosystems. Informed by scientific research and her ongoing study of endemic species, she combines the tactile qualities of ceramics with digital photogrammetry to generate three-dimensional models from layered photographs, which are subsequently translated into hand-built and slip-cast ceramic elements.

Unlike earlier wall-based sculptural relief works such as Collected Forms (2025), Three Rivers (2022), and Garden Portals (2021), this piece is informed by scenes of rupture and wreckage. Embedded within the wall, it functions as both relic and warning: a fragment of a speculative future archaeology where the illusion of stability gives way to susceptibility, emphasizing the precariousness of human systems in the face of climate catastrophe.

Storm at Sea is included in South Florida Cultural Consortium, curated by Laura Novoa and Kimari Jackson, at The Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, on view from April 15 - October 4, 2026. The exhibition brings together works by fourteen artists and one artist collaborative who were awarded the South Florida Cultural Consortium grant from the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs, Art in Public Places in 2025.

Photos: Zachary Balber.