Miami's Underground Art Scene Uses 'Invasive' Plants to Challenge Gentrification Narratives

2 hours ago7 min read

Within Miami's humid art underground, a botanical insurgency is flourishing. Artists are strategically deploying non-native plant species in repurposed warehouses and community gardens to critique the powerful forces of gentrification and migration transforming South Florida.Their installations feature flora like the Brazilian Pepper Tree and Melaleuca—species officially categorized as 'invasive'—as deliberate metaphors for human displacement. These plants, which arrived and thrived through human intervention, parallel the experiences of immigrant communities from Latin America and the Caribbean, who are often met with similar rhetoric of otherness.The work provocatively blurs the line between 'native' and 'alien,' compelling viewers to reconsider the language used to describe both people and plants. This artistic intervention is rooted in Miami's precarious geography—a limestone plateau threatened by rising seas where the competition for space is intense.The artists frame the relentless urban development, with new high-rises displacing historic neighborhoods, as a form of ecological succession driven by capital. They draw a direct connection from the historical draining of the Everglades, which made modern development possible at great ecological cost, to the current cultural 'draining' of neighborhoods like Little Haiti.By presenting urban change through an ecological lens, the art exposes the mechanistic logic that treats both communities and natural life as manageable commodities. The installations resonate by tapping into a deep-seated anxiety about belonging, asking a fundamental question: Who has the right to put down roots, and who holds the power to remove them?.

#art exhibitions

#gentrification

#migration

#South Florida

#non-native plants

#Miami

#editorial picks news

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