Queen of the Swamp: Party as Protest

This installation Queen of the Swamp acknowledges Miami's Bahamian history and its vital ties to a larger cultural geography of Southern and indigenous aesthetics. It draws upon Miami's history of Bahamian laborers' construction of Miami's infrastructure on porous rock and their present descendants' influence on Miami-based culture, a genre of musical and propriety rooted in Miami's Bahamian neighborhoods and heritage. In many ways. Miami's black and indigenous communities are the instigators of Miami's original architecture, infrastructure, and present culture. The history of African and indigenous investments and intersectionality solidarity, and oppression were made in the Everglades. The Everglades National Park archives show listings of the Bahamian and Jamaican immigrants who lived in the park on Long Pine Key. In response, this work is interested in identifying a Miami architectural vernacular and uses its aesthetics as a solution to our swamp lands a woeful reputation as being uninhabitable. The architecture of this installation nods to the long history of marronage and Miami's relationship with the historical present. Miami was once a significant location in the Saltwater Railroad, which also ran through the park itself. This historic connection allows research and discussion from this work to expand from the Everglades and to traverse a larger cultural terrain, including the Caribbean, Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas. At the same time, this installation examines Bahamian contributions and legacies while creating new architectural possibilities that emerge within aesthetics of impropriety.