‘High Tide Low Tide’ Melds Installation Art, Theater With Deering Estate Landscape

Deering Estate presents “High Tide Low Tide,” an exhibition and series of immersive experiences by Miami artist Mette Tommerup, opening Saturday, Oct 10 through Sunday, Nov. 8. (Photo by Pedro Wazzan)

At Deering Estate, blue canvases stretch across a waterfront lawn, others extend among mango trees, while still more create a canvas shelter large enough for visitors to step inside.

And that is only the beginning.

Over the course of a month, Miami-based artist Mette Tommerup’s “High Tide Low Tide” will continually take on new forms.

Opening Saturday, Oct. 10, and running through Sunday, Nov. 8, the project unfolds across Deering Estate in “waves,” moving among installation, painting, sculpture, performance art and theater before ending with an open mic event that turns the final evening over to the public.

Performance, Mette Tommerup, “High Tide Low Tide,” 2026. (Photo by the artist)

She sees the work, including the different “waves,” as something that changes over time, much like the water that surrounds the historic property on Biscayne Bay.

“The tide is not an abstraction here,” Tommerup says. “It’s physically present and continually changing at the edge of the site.”

Liliam Dominguez, head curator at Deering Estate who has lived in Miami for more than 30 years, had the relationship between art and location in mind when she invited Tommerup to develop a site-specific installation.

Dominguez has followed Tommerup’s work for more than 20 years, particularly her large-scale installations, and the curator saw the property as a setting where that practice could engage directly with the natural environment.

“I thought Deering Estate would be a fantastic backdrop,” Dominguez says.

Public interventions are at the center of “High Tide Low Tide” inspired by the rhythms of the sea. (Photo by the artist)

Tommerup chose water as the starting point, Dominguez says, building on her earlier work while developing something new for the site.

For the artist, who says she is drawn to creating on a large scale, the tide works on two levels. At high tide, the surface can appear calm and ordered. As the water recedes, it exposes what lies underneath. She sees a parallel in the creative process and in the ways people present themselves to the world.

“It is absolutely a metaphor for the creative process,” she says.

It also continues a question Tommerup has explored for years: what happens when a painting leaves the wall?

In earlier projects, she has submerged paintings in the ocean, buried canvases in the earth and exposed them to the elements, allowing water, soil, air and chance to alter them.

Jessica Freites, performance artist, will perform as “The Tide” at the opening “Sphere” on Saturday, Oct. 10. (Photo courtesy of Jessica Freites)

With “High Tide Low Tide,” the canvas takes on new roles. It becomes landscape, sculpture, shelter and, eventually, theatrical set, character and chorus.

“I’m increasingly interested in painting as something with a life rather than an object with an ending,” Tommerup says.

For the first time, Tommerup is also exhibiting an installation outdoors. She has made work outside before, surrendering canvases to water, weather and other natural forces, but displaying an installation in the landscape brings a new degree of unpredictability.

Inside a museum, she says, an artwork inevitably acquires a certain preciousness. Outdoors, the artist has less control over it. That unpredictability takes on particular meaning at Deering Estate, where land and water are part of the work rather than simply its backdrop.

THE WAVES

The first two waves unfold outdoors on Saturday, Oct. 10. In “Sphere,” movement artists Jessica Freites and Kathinka Chambers activate a large blue sculptural form and surrounding canvas elements on the waterfront lawn. In “Between Tides,” blue paintings transform the pathways into temporary channels visitors can walk through.

Kathinka Chambers will perform as “The Tender” and interact with the canvases at the opening Saturday, Oct. 10 at Deering Estate. (Photo by the artist)

“Shelter” carries the work into the mango grove, where a 14-foot-long blue canvas structure extends among the trees, where visitors will be able to enter it. “Shelter” and other various pieces will remain in place through Sunday, Nov. 8.

“I really wanted that duration,” Tommerup says. “I didn’t want the project to exist only as an event that happens and then it’s gone.”

She describes the result as “an evolving installation throughout the space,” one that visitors may encounter even when no performance is taking place.

Water also connects two places central to Tommerup’s life. She grew up in Denmark, a country of islands and coastlines where the sea has long shaped daily life, and has spent decades in Coconut Grove, another place defined by its relationship to the water.

“The waterways, the sea  — they tie everyone together,” she says.

In South Florida, an event called “King Tide” inevitably carries environmental associations. Tommerup acknowledges this but says they are not the focus of the project.

“It is not the core of my work, but it is intentionally open to that understanding,” she says.

FROM CANVAS TO STAGE

The third wave, on Saturday, Oct. 24, takes Tommerup into uncharted territory and is something she’s wanted to explore for years: theater.

She had long imagined using her large canvases in a theatrical production but had never found the right circumstances. Then, while exploring Deering Estate, she discovered its Visitor Center Theater.

The discovery led to a conceptual theatrical piece written by Tommerup and guest-directed by South Florida theater artist Brandon Urrutia, artistic director and co-founder of Miami Lakes-based experimental theater company LakeHouseRanchDotPNG.

Brandon Urrutia, artistic director of LakehouseRanchDotPNG, is guest directing the play, “High Tide Low Tide,” a collaboration between the artist and LakehouseRanchDotPNG, at the Visitor Center Theater,  from 6 to 8 p.m., Saturday, Oct. 24. (Photo courtesy of Brandon Urrutia)

Urrutia was drawn to the physical possibilities of Tommerup’s script.

“I love movement,” Urrutia says. “I think in movement. I speak in movement.”

For the director, the challenge is making sure the canvases do not simply become scenery.

“How are the canvases responding to the space as characters?” Urrutia says. “If they’re responding, they’re moving. If they’re moving, how are they moving? Why are they moving?”

The goal, Urrutia says, is to “activate the piece with the text and the performance” rather than stage a play surrounded by art.

The collaboration adds another level to Tommerup’s desire to give up control. Nature is unpredictable. Actors can rehearse. Theater gives Tommerup and Urrutia a structure while still leaving room for movement and change.

“There has to be trust,” Urrutia says.

THE FINAL ACT

For the final wave, Tommerup opens the project to the public.

“King Tide,” on Sunday, Nov. 8, begins with a sunset gathering on the lawn before moving into the Visitor Center Theater for an open mic. Emceed by Amaranta Mattie —the Miami-born and raised Deering Contemporary curator— participants can contribute poetry, music, storytelling or dance, with each given up to five minutes.

Sphere, 2026, “High Tide Low Tide,” steel and canvas,
60 in. diameter. (Photo by the artist)

The progression is deliberate. The project begins with Tommerup’s canvases in the landscape, passes through the bodies of performers and actors and ends with the audience contributing something of its own.

“Now it’s your turn,” Mattie says.

The open mic, she says, “gives them permission to be creative in a realm where, most of the time, artwork is served to you and that is the end of the process.”

For the final event, Tommerup plans to do something deceptively simple.

Listen.

“Instead of ending with a statement,” she says, “I’d rather end with listening.”

WHAT: “High Tide Low Tide,” an exhibition and series of performances by Mette Tommerup

WHERE: Deering Estate, 16701 SW 72nd Ave., Palmetto Bay.

WHEN: Noon to 3 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 10, “Sphere,” “Shelter” and “Between Tides”; 6 to 8 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 24, “High Tide Low Tide”; 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 8, “King Tide.” Exhibition 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., during regular park hours through Sunday, Nov. 8.

COST: Events free with RSVP. Reservations through Eventbrite.

INFORMATION: 305-235-1668 or deeringestate.org.

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