Miami Beach to Unveil Heliotropic Seekers for Elevate Española

Miami Beach, FL – The City of Miami Beach is pleased to present Heliotropic Seekers, a newly commissioned art installation by Brazilian artist Beatriz Chachamovits opening March 6, 2024, at 5:30pm on Española Way between Washington and Collins avenues. The work will be the fourth installment of the city’s Elevate Española series of site-specific installations over Española Way.

“My goal is to create site-specific projects that immerse people in coral reef communities. These experiences serve as platforms to showcase the urgent needs of coral reefs while highlighting their captivating beauty and life-sustaining role in our present and future,” shared Chachamovits. “I invite the public to discover a complex biological network, where the concept of ecosystem is materialized through organization, symmetry and repetition.”

Heliotropic Seekers will feature five brightly colored hanging plexiglass cutouts of various endangered species of fish and coral native to South Florida shores, including grouper, angel, grunt, blue tang and parrot fish joined by coral species such as elkhorn, pillar, staghorn, star, starlet and brain coral. The species will overlap in various compositions, emphasizing the interdependence and diversity of coral reefs. Complementing the suspended cutouts will be a mural painted in collaboration with students from Miami Beach Senior High School’s Painting 1 class.

The diverse marine species on display will encourage spectators to immerse themselves in the flora and fauna of the surrounding marine ecosystem, which is inaccessible to most Miami Beach residents and visitors without diving into the ocean. By engaging with the natural world, viewers will be prompted to consider how their behavior may affect coral reefs and inspire action to care for the world’s oceans.

Heliotropic Seekers is the fourth installment of Elevate Española as a dedicated art installation and the fifth to be presented over Española Way. In 2021, the art collective FriendsWithYou presented a hanging installation over Española Way, which was called Little Cloud Sky, consisting of eight inflatable cloud sculptures. In November 2022, Edouard Duval-Carrié debuted the inaugural installation for Elevate Española titled Trapeze Contortionists. In spring 2023, artist Jillian Mayer presented Very Moving, which explored the impact of technology on our lives and artist collective assume vivid astro focus presented a drag-inspired installation called Adora Vanessa Athena Fantasia during Art Week Miami Beach 2023. Commissions at the site will continue twice a year.

The next installment of Elevate Española is planned for December 2024 by artist Jen Stark to coincide with Miami Beach Art Week.

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About the City of Miami Beach Art in Public Places Program
Art in Public Places is a city board responsible for the commission and purchase of artwork by contemporary artists in all media. The program allocates funds totaling 2% of hard costs for city projects and joint private/public projects. Funds from construction projects may be aggregated into the Art in Public Places Fund and allocated for artwork at public sites and for collection maintenance. The fund is administered by a City Commission-appointed citizen’s board of seven members, the Art in Public Places Committee.

About the Miami Beach Cultural Arts Council
The Cultural Arts Council (CAC) is an 11-member council created in 1997 for the purpose of developing, coordinating and promoting the performing and visual arts in the City of Miami Beach. The CAC serves as arts advocates before governmental bodies, coordinates collective marketing initiatives for the local arts community and funds not-for-profit arts organizations. Since the program’s inception, the CAC has awarded approximately $18 million in cultural arts grants, supporting thousands of performances, exhibits and other cultural activities in Miami Beach.

About Beatriz Chachamovits

Beatriz Chachamovits is an environmental artist and educator from São Paulo, Brazil living and working in Miami, Florida. Her work renders tangible the decline of the coral reef ecosystems, and the role played by humans in it. Her intention is to share the majestic beauty of at-risk marine ecologies as well as the appalling rate of their destruction. She works with monochromatic ceramic sculptures and drawings to highlight the unique shape, form and texture that exists in the underwater world. She is the author and illustrator of the “The Little Handbook of Marine Fishes and Other Aquatic Marvels” (Pequeno manual de peixe marinhos e outras maravilhas aquáticas), published by Companhia das Letrinhas in São Paulo, Brazil in 2018. Selected solo shows includes “White Sea” at Galeria Tato in São Paulo, Brazil (2017), “Into the Great Dying: Waters We Share" at Faena Art Project Room (2022) "Our Changing Seas" at the Frost Science Museum (2022). Selected group shows include: National Museum of Rio de Janeiro, “Coral Expedition: 1865 - 2018” (2018) The Phillip and Patricia Frost Science Museum “Transitional Nature” (2020), and the Art and Cultural Center of Hollywood “C[h]oral Stories and Collective Actions” (2022). Chachamovits’ work has recently been featured in Vogue Magazine’s Earth and Us section and in the National Geographic Education platform, part of an AAAS grant to teach fifth graders about women in marine science. She has received a prize from The Village of Pinecrest for artists and is a resident artist at The Bakehouse Art Complex in Wynwood, Miami.

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