Onajide Shabaka: Miami Walking Studio

Onajide Shabaka: Miami Walking Studio

Join artist Onajide Shabaka as he leads you on a Miami Walking Studio at MDC North Campus's Palmetum. This hidden garden will serve as your art studio for the day. Perusing the Palmetum, you'll see the natural environment and all that it holds through a new lens. You'll use its found items including leaves, twigs, and seeds, not only as inspiration, but also as artistic tools, applied in concert with more traditional tools and techniques, such as Polaroid photography, drawing, and charcoal, as you create your own unique works of art that you are invited to take home.

Shabaka's "studio" is often a metaphorical space of a walk or hike in the urban or rural environment. Through a well-developed research-based walking practice, working both outdoors and in the studio, he explores the environment and its biology, allowing sites to reveal untold or hidden narratives. Since 1989, his art practice has focused on ethnobotany, geology, and archeology as they relate to human history, society, and culture.

Two Miami Walking Studio programs are open to the public and two are open only to MDC students.

Public Programs
Saturday, November 4, 2023, 11:00 AM–1:00 PM
Public Workshop at the Environmental Center, Kendall Campus, Miami Dade College, Miami (Please note that the Environmental Center is at the back of the Kendall Campus, off of the perimeter road. It is recommended that attendees park in Lot 5.)

Saturday, February 24, 2024, 11:00 AM–1:00 PM
Public Workshop at the Palmetum, North Campus, Miami Dade College, 11380 NW 27th Avenue, Miami

MDC Student-Only Programs
RESCHEDULED: Wednesday, November 29, 2023, 12:00–1:00 PM
Student Workshop at the Palmetum, North Campus, Miami Dade College, 11380 NW 27th Avenue, Miami

Wednesday, February 7, 2024, 11:00 AM–1:00 PM
Student Workshop at the Environmental Center, Kendall Campus, Miami Dade College, Miami (Please note that the Environmental Center is at the back of the Kendall Campus, off of the perimeter road. It is recommended that attendees park in Lot 5.)

Tickets are $15. Space is limited, so please register in advance. Attendees at the student-only programs are required to present a valid MDC student ID upon arrival.

Miami artist Onajide Shabaka earned a BFA from Florida Atlantic University in 1993 and an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts in 2000. Recent solo exhibitions have included On the edge of tomorrows… in 2022 and Alosúgbe, a journey across time in 2019, both at Emerson Dorsch, Miami; and Floridian Lacunae in 2019 at the Art and Culture Center/Hollywood. His work has been featured in the group exhibitions On the Samara's Wing: Ethnobotanical Negotiations of Cultural Space at the Frank C. Ortis Art Gallery, Pembroke Pines, Florida, and Still Life at The Franklin, Chicago, both in 2021. He has been artist in residence at Project Row Houses, Houston; Everglades National Park; and IS Projects, Miami; and has received the 2019 Locust Projects WaveMaker Grant; a 2018 Oolite Arts Ellies Creator Award; and a 2017 Diaspora Vibe Cultural Arts Incubator (DVCAI) Travel Grant to Paramaribo, Suriname.

Onajide Shabaka: Miami Walking Studio is curated by MOAD Consulting Curator Isabela Villanueva and is part of the series MOAD Projects, exhibitions and commissions that provide platforms for local artists to realize new projects or present recent bodies of work.

MOAD's programs are made possible with the support of the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs and the Cultural Affairs Council, the Miami-Dade County Mayor and Board of County Commissioners. They are sponsored in part by the State of Florida, Department of State, Division of Arts and Culture, the Florida Council on Arts and Culture, and the National Endowment for the Arts.