BETWEEN ISLANDS AND PENINSULAS

On a platform situated just outside the Bakehouse Art Complex’s Audrey Love Gallery, artist Amanda Linares presents Between Islands and Peninsulas. The sculptural installation is made up of three separate elements that come together as a table, accompanied by an artist book, that represents her journey from Havana to Miami in 2013. Through the use of text, images, and found objects, Linares reflects on the immigrant experience and explores themes of identity, memory, displacement, absence, and reconnection.

In Between Islands and Peninsulas, three separate elements are installed as one larger table and function as tangible representations of three distinct parts of Linares’ journey: the island of Cuba, the ocean between, and the Florida peninsula. The tables have grid-like patterns the artist utilizes to map the spatial relationships between the different places. The grid becomes a way for Linares to contextualize and organize her personal narrative. On the tables, she places artist books that are chapters of a larger story, like topographical elements in a scattered geography. 

The construction and placement of the installation also function to guide the narrative quality of the work. They require the viewer to take an active part by walking around the tables and stopping to navigate the pages of the books. In a way, the viewer is taken on their own journey, mirroring the one Linares represents through her work, an immigrant’s story that transports you over time, space, and destinations. 

Linares’ varied use of materials allows her to create works that are simultaneously delicate yet durable. She seeks to capture the contradictions of the human condition through materiality. By using seemingly dissonant mediums in individual works, she is able to convey the coexistence of contradictory feelings and ideas.

Link here to read the full article written by Laura Novoa, Curatorial + Public Programs Associate of the Bakehouse Art Complex.

2020