On View at Collective 62: ‘Idas y Vueltas’

A detail of Evelyn Politzer’s “Nesting I,” part of the group exhibition “Idas y Vueltas” (“From Here and There”) on view at Collective 62 in Liberty City through May 25. (Photos by Erin Parish)

“Sharon Berebichez, Fernanda Froes, Marcela Marcuzzi, Valeria Montag, and Evelyn Politzer examine the connection to their homeland and familial roots. They delve into the ties that bind them to their heritage, as well as to the present time and place,” reads the wall text below the title of the exhibition “Idas y Vueltas” (“From Here and There”).

At Collective 62, co-curated by Dainy Tapia and Manuela Micucci, the group show explores current connections to homeland and heritage. It results from deep conversations between the curators and artists, not only about the works but also personal histories. Each piece carries backstories of lineage, migration, and place.

Installation view of group exhibition ‘Idas y Vueltas’ at Collective 62. (Photo by Erin Parish)

Imagery in thread on linen, wine-stained surfaces, hanging bird’s nests, stitched leaves, and painted, shredded textiles all function as vessels of cultural storytelling and memory. The exhibition’s palette and forms maintain harmony through organic materials and biomorphic shapes, avoiding hard-edged structures or industrial materials. This refusal of the grid and of masculine-coded materials like concrete or steel adds to the subtlety of the proposition. The materials engage the viewer with a multitude of tactile sensations, rather than authoritative presentation. While the current trend in immersive exhibitions is to dominate the space, “Idas y Vueltas” inhabits it for today.

The dialogue between artists and their shared commonality is the central theme: each emigrated from South America to Miami and primarily uses materials found in the environment.

Marcela Marcuzzi, “Untitled,” 2024, oil on velvet, 55”x 71’’ (Photo by Erin Parish)

For them, a walk in nature may not only inform the work but also provide art supplies. Each of the artists is also a mother, expanding one’s perspective on the possibilities and fruits of creation. Through fibers, roots, leaves, and acts of labor, the curators both hunted and gathered personal and collective stories.

An occurring theme is the representation of trees. The Tree of Life serves as a widely acknowledged symbol, encapsulating the essence of life, connectivity, and the interrelation of all entities, both in physical and spiritual dimensions. This motif is prevalent across many cultures, religions, and mythologies, frequently symbolizing the cyclical nature of life, death, and rebirth, as well as the connection between heaven and earth, or the past, present, and future.

Valeria Montag, “Brasil na Lona,” 2025, installation of found tarp pieces embroidered with thread and handwritten poem on wall, dimensions variable. (Photo by Erin Parish)

The works consist of materials both gathered and sourced.  This subtly raises the idea of the roles of women and men in early human societies. For years, researchers errantly subscribed to the concept that early humans had a distinct division of gender-specific labor, where men typically engaged in hunting, and women in gathering. This perspective has extended beyond academic circles, often used to argue that men and women today should adhere to the so-called “natural” roles reflected in early human societies. Another question emerges: Which collected things hold enough value to be retained and transported across borders? This inquiry explores the importance of an object’s history and functionality.

The show starts with Montag’s “Brasil no Lona,” a wall installation of found tarp pieces embroidered with thread and a handwritten poem in Portuguese on the wall. In Brazil, the truck drivers use “lonas” or tarps to cover their merchandise during transport.  The metaphor “Brasil esta na lona” is significant to the artist. It directly translates as “Brazil is not on the tarp,” a boxing term, a version of not being “down for the count.” These lonas are time-worn, the result of repeated labor. They are full of holes yet unblemished, as if bleached by the sun through the hours, days, weeks of exposure in transit. Function meets poetry in Montag’s hands.

Nearby, Politzer’s “Nesting” series reimagines sculpture through grand, intricate nests made from hand-dyed Uruguayan wool entwined. The sculptures evoke both shelter and vulnerability, their biomorphic forms recalling gestures of gathering and making that span species and cultures. Structurally, these are satisfyingly more complex than Politzer’s earlier iterations on the same theme.

Evelyn Politzer, “Nesting I,” 2025, hand-dyed wool yarn and other fibers, metal, copper wire, 36” x 20” (Photo by Erin Parish)

Politzer’s “Water on Mars” is curatorially embraced by the closeness of the hallway, of architecture used purposefully. Her yarns form horizon lines and the horizon is always a place to look towards and imagine as a somehow better place, somewhere over the rainbow, a bright future.

Politzer stitched together her Uruguayan heritage and Miami life, employing yarn as connective tissue across generations and geographies. As Politzer recalls, “I feel the connection to the materials in a way that connects me with Uruguay. I still remember being a little girl, driving with my grandparents through the countryside, and watching colorful skeins of yarn hanging to dry on clotheslines.” Oftentimes, the most successful artworks are related to foundational life experiences.

Marcuzzi introduces a bodily dimension through works like “Savia,” a site-specific installation combining branches and Argentinian wine. The wine, a potent symbol of her upbringing among those vineyards, becomes both medium and memory. The branches are arranged to represent the map of arteries in the body, the blood and the wine are one and the same. Her shredded velvet “painting” evokes water and rupture—tapestries severed and rejoined—reflecting on repair and resilience.

Marcela Marcuzzi, “Savia,” 2025, site-specific installation of branches , gauze, gesso, and Argentinian wine on drywall, dimensions variable. (Photo by Erin Parish)

Working between Brazil and Miami, Froes uses Mangrove leaves and Brazilwood for natural dyeing. Her large tree-form wall piece, dyed with pigments from both locations, gathers traces of movement and place, intertwining personal and geographic histories. These ideas are also represented in her two “Remangue,” “Plantula” wall pieces as well.

Berebichez’s “Teacups I, II, III, and IV” are embroidered images of a single broken teacup parts on linen. They are paired with and displayed alongside the actual fragments of the broken teacup, the literal and the illusionistic.  Importantly, her grandmother carried her tea set from Poland to Mexico. It evokes both fragility and endurance, offering a meditation on motherhood’s transformative labor and the unexpected development of an inheritance.

“From Roots to Leaves,” by Berebichez, incorporates found leaves that she embroidered in the three languages that inhabit her daily life: Spanish, English, and Hebrew. Each leaf holds an element of home life, of family life, in a single word. Like Froes and Marcuzzi, she uses the tree metaphor for the family tree, of putting down roots.

Sharon Berebichez, “From Roots to Leaves,” 2025, pencil drawing and embroidered tree leaves on wall installation, dimensions variable. (Photo by Erin Parish)

The strength of the exhibition lies in its cohesion. Through sustained dialogue, curators Tapia and Micucci shaped a show in which works are not isolated but rather form a network of relations. Themes of migration and identity recur within each piece, yet it maintains its singularity while participating in a shared structure of meaning and relationship.

Each piece is enhanced by the story behind it, each object a signifier of an experience. The cultural impulse of storytelling, to engage with one’s ancestors, is relevant to each of the works. This is not art for art’s sake but part of each artist’s autobiography. The parallel modes of interpretation and representation are blended here; the letters that make up a word are equal to color and texture. Different modes of learning are fused into one.

“Idas y Vueltas” is a quiet force, and rather  than dominating space, it inhabits it like a flock of birds, offering an exchange between artists, materials, and place.

WHAT: “Idea y Vueltas”

 WHERE: Collective 62, 827 NW 62nd St., Miami

 WHEN: Through Friday, May 25

 COST: Free. Viewing by appointment.

 INFORMATION: (305) 586-0252, thecollective62.com 

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.