Local Artists Find Joy in Green Space Group Show

“Count it All Joy!” brings together work from 15 Miami-area artists, all intended to evoke joyful feelings or express what the artist takes joy from at MiMi’s Green Space gallery through Thursday, Sept. 27. (Photo by Zachary Balber, courtesy of Green Space)

At MiMo’s Green Space gallery, a new exhibition places joy at its center, bringing together works that explore pleasure, optimism and delight.

Organized by curators Donnamarie Baptiste and Arsimmer McCoy, “Count it All Joy!” brings together work from 15 Miami-area artists, all intended to evoke joyful feelings or express what the artist takes joy from.

The show includes work in a variety of mediums, all giving distinct perspectives on the show’s theme and occasionally doubling as insights into the diverse backgrounds that cohabit in Miami.

Photographs taken in the Everglades by Maggie Steber and Lisette Morales show subjects cohabiting with nature. (Photo by Zachary Balber, courtesy of Green Space)

Photographs taken by Maggie Steber and Lisette Morales show people cohabiting with nature – women float and swim in still waters, a man looks out at the expanse of the Everglades – while Sophie Wong depicts scenes of Caribbean life in her paintings. An installation by Chinese-Panamanian artist MaiYap features sculpted mooncakes arranged in a traditional batea, or wooden tray, from Panama’s Bayano region, reflecting the artist’s heritage.  And a quilted work by Genesis Moreno features a screenshotted TikTok video demonstrating the “butterfly hug,” a self-soothing technique; the video itself plays nearby on a monitor.

MaiYap’s installation features sculpted mooncakes served in an indigenous batea tray reflecting the artist’s Chinese Panamanian heritage. (Photo by Zachary Balber, courtesy of Green Space)

Baptiste and McCoy were both separately selected by Green Space to curate the show. Both were enticed by the theme, which they saw as providing an antidote to a zeitgeist dominated by politics.

“They wanted to activate the gallery space with works that were centered around joy and create this joyful space,” McCoy says. “Everybody feels a little uneasy, and they wanted to bring into the space a place of ease, a place that brings joy to folks.”

The two found their contrasting, yet compatible curatorial styles worked well together. McCoy treated selection more intuitively, selecting work that “moved her immediately.” Baptiste, meanwhile, took a more measured, research-based approach by visiting studios and having conversations with artists.

One of the largest artworks in the show comes curator Arsimmer McCoy, an “archive install” of furniture and other heirlooms from her grandmother’s living room. (Photo by Zachary Balber, courtesy of Green Space)

“I wanted it to be something where whoever walked in the room could take a look at something and either immediately connect with it or dig into the context a little deeper and find a bit of themselves in there,” she says. “And I think Arsimmer came from a point of, immediately as an artist, seeing something and feeling joy.”

One of the largest artworks in the show comes from McCoy herself, an “archive install” of furniture and other heirlooms from her grandmother’s living room. Decorated with items such as an ornate couch, a reclaimed-wood coffee table, and a CRT television stand complete with Disney films on VHS, the space is meant to evoke nostalgic memories of time spent in similar spaces, for the artist herself and for others. The installation is part of the Carol City Museum, a long-gestating project in which McCoy plans to transform her home in Miami Gardens into an arts and community institution.

“That installation is an homage to the joy that I find in iconography, the joy that I find in the archives,” McCoy says. “You can see those moments of rest, of connectivity, of love, of culture. And it’s also a little disruption of the white-walled gallery space as well, because I know people will gather in that space, and they will find themselves.”

Sophie Wong depicts scenes of Caribbean life in her paintings. (Photo by Zachary Balber, courtesy of Green Space)

McCoy says visitors have offered a variety of comments on the artwork and the comforting feelings it generated. “I had an elder hit me up and say ‘I just wanted to watch ‘Touched By An Angel’ with Della Reese in that room,’ it reminded me of my grandmother’s room,” she says. “And then we see younger folks who are like ‘Man, I remember that, the color of that carpet,’ or  ‘I remember those photos, the obituaries.’”

Whether through McCoy’s nostalgic archive, Steber’s photos, or the self-soothing depicted in Moreno’s quilts, the works in “Count it All Joy!” prove that happiness can come from a variety of places, some more unexpected than others.

WHAT: “Count It All Joy!” 

WHERE: Green Space, 7200 Biscayne Blvd., Miami

WHEN: noon to 6 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday through Thursday, Sept. 27.

COST: Free

INFORMATION: (786) 266-6392; greenspacemiami.org

ArtburstMiami.com is a nonprofit media source for the arts featuring fresh and original stories by writers dedicated to theater, dance, visual arts, film, music and more. Don’t miss a story at www.artburstmiami.com