Solange Adum Abdala

Miami, an iconic city for the Latin community in the United States, arises in the middle of a geography of thick swampy nature, which has been transgressed by humans during the last 80 years, since the beginning of its architectural and commercial boom in the second decade of the 20th century.

The Swamp City project is divided into three parts: The Swamp, The Resilience, and The City. The Swamp stands out for its representation of the natural state of the Florida area, whose tropical and swampy thickness coexists similarly and harmoniously with urban and suburban neighbourhoods. The Resilience, for its part, witnesses how the weight of cement constructions imposes itself as a skyline, subduing nature unquestionably. Finally, The City documents the center of the city of Miami. In this place, commerce, which had been in decline due to the 2008 economic crisis, still maintains absolute supremacy over nature.

The photographic document compiles images of desolate land, garages, factories, warehouses, anonymous constructions, posters, advertisements, and details. The register is clean, geometric, frontal, and objective, relevant to shapes and contrasts. All these “architectural devices” are photographed almost sculpturally, thus discovering a sub-natural landscape devastated by fierce anthropization and excessive growth. Thus, each “sculpture” unveiled in Swamp City becomes a kind of landmark whose presence is now irreversible, reconfiguring the territory from a landscape to a deformed anti-landscape of unknown consequences. The landmarks suggested by the artist are perhaps a mirage of the so-called “American Dream” for the Latin community in the U.S.