Rooted in Motion: Susanne Schirato’s ‘Headwind’ at Vizcaya

“Headwind” by Susanne Schirato, commissioned by the Contemporary Arts Program (CAP) at Vizcaya Museum and Gardens, 2025.  (Photo by Rodrigo Gaya, courtesy of Vizcaya Museum and Gardens)

The wind arrived first. Before color or form, before concept or construction, it was the wind that struck Susanne Schirato on her first visit to Vizcaya Museum and Gardens. That invisible force—constant, atmospheric, felt more than seen—became both metaphor and material in “Headwind,” her new site-specific installation commissioned through Vizcaya’s Contemporary Arts Program. The work fills the Lower East Terrace with rows of hand-dyed windsocks that rise in loose, fluid formation, recalling schools of fish or flocks mid-migration. Tugged and tousled by the breeze, the forms evoke what Schirato calls “a tension between movement and belonging.”

At a glance, the installation is spare: a field of windsocks, identical in form but never still. But look longer, and subtle distinctions emerge. Each piece was dyed by hand, one by one, in a labor-intensive process that the artist describes as tactile and slow.

Along the bayfront, the windsocks rise in shades of blue that echo the sky and the sea. Headwind” by Susanne Schirato, commissioned by the Contemporary Arts Program (CAP) at Vizcaya Museum and Gardens, 2025.  (Photo by Rodrigo Gaya, courtesy of Vizcaya Museum and Gardens)

The windsocks shift in the breeze, drawing soft curves across the terrace, while the ropes that tether them sag and arc in irregular lines. Made from industrial materials, the elements are familiar, even mundane, but Schirato has worked them until they feel personal, deliberate, quietly disobedient.

On opening night, a full moon lit Biscayne Bay and a light wind moved through the terrace, lifting the fabric into motion. What had seemed static now shifted responding to the breeze.

Schirato calls wind “a symbol of both confrontation and direction”: a force that pushes against, delays, even manipulates. In this context, the title “Headwind” takes on layered meaning: not just a term for resistance, but a term for being unsettled, caught between motion and obstruction. Each windsock becomes a kind of body in negotiation with its surroundings, pushed and pulled, rarely at rest.

Seen from the waterfront, “Headwind” by Susanne Schirato, commissioned by the Contemporary Arts Program (CAP) at Vizcaya Museum and Gardens, 2025, draws a line of blue along the South Terrace, catching the changing light as day meets evening.  (Photo by Rodrigo Gaya, courtesy of Vizcaya Museum and Gardens)

While the windsocks rise and flutter, the ropes that anchor them are equally expressive. Dyed in the same blue as the fabric above, they twist and dip across the ground like tendrils or tide lines. “The ropes act like roots,” Schirato says, “but they’re not buried.” Instead, they remain visible, a gesture toward what lies beneath the surface, culturally and ecologically. In a city shaped by displacement and porous ground, the installation evokes a collective search for grounding. The tension between motion and belonging becomes not just metaphor, but structure.

For Helena Gomez, curator of the exhibition and director of Vizcaya’s Contemporary Arts Program, “Headwind” embodies “a sensitivity to context and atmosphere” that defines CAP’s curatorial mission.

The work’s blue windsocks animate the garden, catching shifting currents that echo Vizcaya’s coastal landscape. Headwind” by Susanne Schirato, commissioned by the Contemporary Arts Program (CAP) at Vizcaya Museum and Gardens, 2025.  (Photo by Rodrigo Gaya, courtesy of Vizcaya Museum and Gardens)

“She captures the tension between human presence and natural forces,” says Gomez, “inviting viewers to consider how air and movement circulate through the Lower East Terrace and how we, as individuals and a collective, interact with nature and each other.” What drew the program to Schirato’s practice, Gomez explains, was her ability to imbue industrial materials with meaning and to treat the environment “not as a backdrop but as an active participant.”

In “Headwind,” the windsocks shift in unison, yet each remains distinct, rooted with care, shaped by the breeze. It is a work that asks not just how we move through the world, but how we are moved by it. At this moment, with the bay just steps away and hurricane season still underway, Schirato’s gesture feels both fragile and precise—a quiet reckoning with the forces, seen and unseen, that shape a place and the people within it.

WHAT: Headwind
WHERE: Vizcaya Museum & Gardens, 3251 South Miami Ave., Miami
WHERE: 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday through Monday
Gardens open until 5:30 p.m. Closed on Tuesdays. Through May 18, 2026
COST: Exhibition included in museum admission; $25 general admission 13 and older; $10, 6 to 12 years old; free admission for five and younger.
INFORMATION: (305) 250-9133 and https://vizcaya.org/

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