Downtown’s Queue Gallery is Rebelling Against Miami’s Art World Conventions

Queue Gallery’s muted aesthetic and interest in conceptual art sets it apart from the Miami art scene. (Photo courtesy of Queue Gallery)

Queue Gallery is a bit off the beaten path in more ways than one. It’s in downtown Miami, close to the New World School of the Arts but far from art scene hotspots like Allapattah and the Design District. It’s housed in a well-worn downtown Miami loft space, across the hall from the dance music vinyl emporium T-Bag Records. The floors are well-worn, with dark-painted wood contrasting with whitewashed walls, and a moldy smell hanging in the air outside thankfully dissipates once inside the building. 

It’s not the typical place for a fine art gallery, and slightly inconvenient given the second-floor space’s lack of direct street access. But for Catherine Camargo, Queue Gallery’s owner and curator and a self-described “river rat” who grew up nearby along the Miami River, the powerful feeling of nostalgia pulled her in. 

Catherine Camargo is the owner and curator of Queue Gallery. (Photo by Clarence Josey II)

“I kind of fell in love with the building, because it’s one of the last remaining old school buildings around here,” she says. “There used to be a pizza shop downstairs called Nino’s that I would go to every day during high school. So it’s very full circle being here, it feels good.” 

The gallery’s ideas are even more unconventional. Camargo issued a bold rebuke to the city’s art scene when she launched the gallery with a debut group show, “Memory Stick,” in August, with a press statement declaring that Miami’s galleries and institutions were playing it too safe. 

“The notion that we must safely exhibit only what can be simply understood reads as an insult to many art enthusiasts in our city—those who attend show after show seeking an experience that challenges perception, that disrupts the surface and digs deeper,” the statement read. “‘Memory Stick’ rejects the notion that audiences are incapable of engaging with complexity. Instead, it embraces work that confronts the subconscious and seeks value beyond the purely aesthetic—a thirst born not of pessimism, but of a contemporary hope, with language evolving alongside us.” 

Indeed, the works in Queue’s presentations don’t feel like anything one would associate with Miami, an intentional choice from Camargo. The gallerist is a veteran of the Miami scene, having spent much of her career at the Margulies Collection and briefly at the Pérez Art Museum Miami. She took Queue around town as a nomadic gallery and magazine, curating presentations at spaces across the city in recent years, before opening up shop downtown. In that time she established an almost anti-Miami aesthetic of muted colors and utilitarian materials – Concrete, metal, fabric, found objects – as well as experimental takes on two-dimensional image-making. 

Karryl Eugene’s work uses photo collage and calligraphic elements to address the ways in which black culture is transformed into status symbols for the wealthy. (Photo courtesy of Queue Gallery)

“I really wanted to make sure that for the first show the text was kind of a critique of our overall perception of ourselves,” Camargo says. “There’s an idea down here that people aren’t complex enough, or that we don’t have the capacity to indulge in conceptual art, and talk about it and enjoy it. And I have an issue with that, because I’m from here.” 

In other words, it’s a rebellion in favor of art focused on ideas and against the typically decorative brightness and Caribbean joie de vivre that Miami sells to the world. An upcoming show from Phoenix, Arizona-based artist Morgan Leigh is a good example of their aesthetic: Her works made from foam wrapped in cloth, leather, and snakeskin, occasionally saturated with desert sand, feature flesh tones of brown, beige, and black but nevertheless transmit a sensual charge. 

Beyond looks, conceptual ideas certainly animate Queue’s most recent show. “BLACK MANS SHADOW WORK” pairs photo-based work from Torrance Hall and Karryl Eugene, two New York-based artists interrogating themes of selfhood and identity beyond stereotypical conceptions of black manhood. Each also presents a perspective that feels rooted in the 2000s, both belonging to Gen Z, such as Hall’s digitally-manipulated self-portraits that take on a smooth, metallic aesthetic reminiscent of the Y2K era. Eugene’s photo collages, meanwhile, splice together hip-hop calligraphy with images of video game characters, celebrities, and photos taken at businessman Michael Rubin’s 2023 “All-White Party” to interrogate how black cultural signifiers are appropriated as status symbols for the wealthy.

Although Camargo has worked mainly with artists from outside of the city since Queue Gallery opened, she mentions a few key collaborators and artists working in Miami that have influenced the project, including Luna Palazzolo-Daboul, Alberto Checa, David Correa, and Fared Manzur. She too is a product of the city, and of an artistic family: Her mother Kareen Pauld Camargo, who was born in Haiti, was one of the first black dancers for the Miami City Ballet.

After graduating from the New World School of the Arts, Catherine moved on to the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, where she began to develop her curatorial sensibilities. Initially intending to become an artist herself, she found herself painting “very Caribbean, figurative, colorful paintings” that she eventually got sick of. 

Catherine Camargo, Queue Gallery’s owner and curator grew up near her gallery along the Miami River and the powerful feeling of nostalgia pulled her in.  (Photo courtesy of Queue Gallery)

“I felt like I was falling into a cliche and I was not making for myself, I was making for everyone else. And that translated over into my taste as a curator, because I think I got so sick of making work like that that I just started becoming obsessed with looking at other artists who were making work that looked nothing like my own.” 

That mindset has carried through into her stewardship of Queue and its mission to change what art from Miami can look like and the things it can say. 

“Obviously, as a half-Haitian woman, I think the Caribbean diasporic, colorful, beautiful art is still really important,” she continues, “but I think we have enough of it in Miami.” 

WHAT: Queue Gallery

WHEN: Gallery hours: 1 to 6 p.m., Tuesday through Saturday

WHERE: 212 N. Miami Ave., Miami

COST: Free

INFORMATION: queuegallery.net 

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