Photograph by Melody Timothee
Who I am:
Zee Lopez Del Carmen is a curator, researcher, facilitator, and Miami-Dade County local from the Caribbean that specializes in programmatic development for museums, galleries, nonprofits, foundations, and community-based organizations.Zee’s curatorial practice is always a collaborative approach with artists and community; one that is grounded in the principles of Welcoming, Exploration, and the Ethics of Connection (values statements developed in partnership with Gabriel Garcia Vega). Through their work, Zee seeks to foster liberty - to be in belonging without compromise or contortion. By centering historically excluded and systematically disenfranchised stories, they develop exhibitions at the intersections of interrogation and investigation so we can collectively navigate shared lived experiences and carry the impact of the art together, long after we exit art spaces.
Zee’s curatorial practice blooms from the understanding that art is a language and a powerful tool of archival revival. One that allows us to be both witness and active participants, with an understanding that exhibitions are a space where there is a devotion to presence. Our stories make places sacred. And so to share artists' living practice is to sanctify.
Abuela's House
Abuela’s House transcends the traditional notion of an exhibition; it is a love letter to identity, cultural inheritance, craftsmanship, and home. Each of the twenty-one scenes realized by Destyni “Desi” Swoope’s own hands are a true mix of paint, found objects, and an eclectic collection of fabric. This exhibition is an intimate exploration of the enduring creative and personal influence of the artist’s maternal great-grandmother, and a celebration of the magic of time, wisdom, and love channeled by a single person.A force in Caribbean culture, abuela isn’t simply the person to guide us or make us feel at home in moments when we don't even know what home looks like. She’s the personification of our history, the rich soil from which we sprout and bloom into our fullest, truest selves. For families that have experienced immigration, abuela is the bridge to everything that affects our past, present, and future. Abuela’s House encourages us to understand that the colors of our lives come directly from the seeds our ancestors sowed for us, and we now have the opportunity to bloom freely, wildly, and on our own terms.
Desi has loved on each piece from conception to the final stitch. Layers of found fabrics and secondhand clothes are expertly hand-sewn into the artist’s uniquely electric and playful color palette. Yellows, blues, purples, and pinks, breathe life into scenes of a game of dominó (Heirloom, 2023), colorful neighborhoods made of stacked buildings (Boriken, 2023), cafecito cups from Abuela’s Kitchen (2023), and even Papi and Abuela’s Anniversary (2024). The colors and textures found in her work are the manifestations of her grandmother's grace and prayers.
Ultimately, Desi patchworks the spirit of the Puerto Rican/Caribbean women who have carried on for generations, whose traditions and beliefs inspired her to dream for them and for herself. “Our stories and lives should not succumb to extinction amidst the rapid evolution of the world,” Swoope says. “Through Abuela's House, I assert the great significance in cultural preservation, despite the complexities of identity and societal expectations." This exhibition prompts us to reclaim the power of our memories. The artwork first shown in Miami at Supermarket Gallery has now made its debut museum exhibition, and it paints the tapestry of her Abuela’s legacy as the vibrant, living foundation of her family.
Shown in Chicago, IL - September 6, 2025 through July 16, 2026. Curated by Zee Lopez Del Carmen for the National Museum of Puerto Rican Art and Culture.
https://nmprac.org/ Photographs by Danny Cantu
Shown in Miami, FL - September 14, 2024 through September 28, 2024. Curated by Zee Lopez Del Carmen, Maria Gabriela Di Giammarco, and Mario Andres Rodriguez in partnership with Supermarket Gallery.
https://supermarketgallery.com/ Photographs by Ayni Studios
Ebb & Flow: Exploring the Womanhood Continuum
Frank Gallery - Pembroke Pines, FL
https://www.thefrankgallery.org/
November 21, 2024 - February 22, 2025Curated by Zee Lopez Del Carmen and Sophie Bonet, Ebb & Flow draws us into the intricate tides of womanhood—a journey that encompasses birth, growth, transformation, and inevitable change; each phase contributing to an expansive tapestry of experiences across time and culture. Featuring 11 artists who evoke themes of motherhood, identity, memory, and self-agency, this exhibition not only explores the individual narratives that define womanhood but also questions the broader societal currents that shape our understanding of the human experience.
The artworks in this show span multiple disciplines, each one engaging with the cycles of life, the societal gaze, and the shared heritage that binds us across generations and geographies. Through these diverse works, Ebb & Flow highlights the multifaceted nature of womanhood: Rodriguez Meyer’s Mother Mold series examines women’s bodies as cultural vessels; Font’s Cycles explores the rhythms of life and the body; RPM Projects' installation delves into memory and ritual. Together, these pieces illuminate the cycles of life, care, and transformation, encouraging viewers to contemplate the continuum of womanhood.
Historically, the feminine body has been both celebrated and constrained—a symbol of creation, vitality, and regeneration, yet confined by societal expectations. This exhibition illuminates the body not merely as a physical entity but as a vessel of cultural and ancestral memory. The resulting dialogue reveals womanhood as a continuum where personal and collective histories intertwine, producing a shared language of resilience and transformation.In Ebb and Flow, the silent narratives within domestic and natural spaces are elevated, reminding us of the roles women inhabit as caretakers, nurturers, and storytellers.
As rituals of the home and body are revisited, gestures like folding, weaving, and molding become acts of preservation. Centering these quiet moments, the exhibition challenges viewers to contemplate resilience and strength passed through generations. Each piece serves as a point on a larger map of human experience, revealing cycles of womanhood as both personal and universal—a journey of discovery, loss, and renewal. The exhibition invites a communal reflection on the ebb and flow of life itself—a reminder that the continuum of womanhood, like the tides, is eternal, transcendent, and shared.Exhibiting Artists: Amanda Covach, Amy Gelb, Ana Albertina Delgado, Coralina Rodriguez Meyer, RPM Projects, Ivonne Ferrer, Lisu Vega, MaiYap, Marina Font
Acknowledgment: This exhibition, curated by guest curator Pamela ‘Zee’ Lopez del Carmen and The Frank’s chief curator Sophie Bonet, is the culmination of over a year of dedicated research, numerous studio visits, and countless conversations. Special thanks to artist MaiYap, whose initial approach and desire to create a show on human reproductive cycles and menopause inspired and sparked the journey that led to Ebb & Flow: Exploring the Womanhood Continuum.Courtesy of the City of Pembroke Pines
Photographs by Dream Focus Photography
What is Your Relationship to Magic?
Hosted at The Center for Black Innovation - Miami, FL
April 26, 2024 - April 28, 2024
Commissioned & Curated by Gaby Garcia-Vera & Zee Lopez Del Carmen
Produced in Partnership under Flamboyán Consulting3 days, 36 local visionaries, 78 original works. For all art lovers, brujería believers, & magic collectors. Local artists, each wielding their own artistic wand, conjured up breathtaking interpretations of the Major and Minor Arcana, infused with the electrifying essence of Miami.
Wander through a wonderland where sun-kissed beaches meet neon dreams, where salsa spins with ancient spirits, and where every stroke of genius whispers secrets of our vibrant metropolis. Magic is about the Ethic of Connection. Let the art ignite your imagination, let the numbers whisper your destiny, and let the spirit of the Magic City weave its spell around you. Magic is about choosing each other, over, and over, and over again, and all the while choosing ourselves along the way.
| Exhibiting Artists: | ||
|---|---|---|
| Alison | Amanda Covach | Angelica Kunstmann |
| Art.Emis | Belén Hernandez | Born by Pressure |
| Carrington Ware | DePaul Vera | Diego Taborda |
| Dimitry Said Chamy | Ereka | Friday |
| Genaro Ambrosino | Gianna (GI) | Grey |
| Houston R. Cypress, Otter Clan | Iman Clark | Jacek J. Kolasinski |
| Kim Murphy | Kristina Reinis | Kunya Rowley |
| Lance Minto-Strouse | Lauren Baccus | Liss |
| Marie Vickles | Mario Mathias | Najja Moon |
| Nicole Salcedo | Niki Lopez | Passion Ward |
| phonebeef | Rebecca White | Tesoro Carolina |
| Zee Lopez Del Carmen | ZEHNO |
About our Hosting Location: The Center for Black Innovation is a think tank and black innovation ecosystem building organization with the understanding that smart cities and communities are formed by cultivating great leaders, entrepreneurs, and real capital pathways that values black culture and communities as our greatest asset.The Center is guided by their 5 Pillars: Innovation, Economic & Social Mobility, Business Development, Education, and Family & Community.https://www.cfbi.org/
Photographs by Passion Ward
Of Mango, y Magia, ah Mirak
Hosted at Casa Coqui - Miami, FL
May 20, 2023
Curated by Gaby Garcia-Vera & Zee Lopez Del Carmen
A pop up art exhibition about the Mirak (miracle) of being Queer, the Magia (magic) of home, and the Mangos in the canopy.
We are the mangos that rolled past the garden gates to sunlit pastures, unimpeded by the canopy of previous ghosts. We are the ones who knew the call home was only to be answered through an act of liberation.Untethered from placement, find yourself amongst the mirrors in the room; a gift to us from each creative, these walls hold their open invitation. An invitation to be in curiosity, to look deeply, to disarm yourself in the uncertain and unexpected. Each invitation serves as a looking glass into the lives of others, to see from behind their eyes. To traverse each vignette is to further yourself from a point of orientation, to revel in the multiplicity of being.We do not need a throughline to coexist and to flourish, we simply need to be. We do not need a regimen of cohesion, because each present work is a comma, not a period. The reflections of the mirrors on these walls are meant to envelop and anoint us with the truths of lives lived - that didn't have to end up in a room together, and yet, did. As did you.
The roots of the mango tree have come alive, the sap of the fruit is healing in its sweetness, we are the blooms of manifested miracles.
We rejected the cohesion of institutions, and embraced the love lines of the works that we curated in our homes - works that are as inspired and nuanced as the conversations we have in our living rooms.Institutional walls informed us that work must be in ease and bring copacetic conversation; but a home holds clangs and clashes, so what better place than a home to hold the work that reflects all of who we are.
| Exhibiting Artists: | |
|---|---|
| Angelica Kunstmann | Arsimmer McCoy |
| DePaul Vera | Geo Vanna Gonzalez |
| Luis Thomas | Mario Matias |
| Melody Timothee | Michelle Lisa Polissaint |
| misael soto | Najja Moon |
| Nicole Salcedo | Rommy Torrico |
| Vivian Azalia |
Photographs by Passion Ward
Video by Arsimmer McCoy
The Front Room
A New World School of the Arts Alumnae Exhibition
New World Gallery - Miami, FL
November 18, 2022 through January 13, 2023
Curated by Zee Lopez Del Carmen“As you enter, take your shoes off and don’t you dare touch the porcelain dolls.” This was the customary instruction-turned-mantra that we’d repeat along with our elders as we entered The Front Room. Our house rules would eclipse the Ten Commandments, even on Sundays.
Video by Juan Luis Matos and Preguntas Studio for Commissioner.Friday, Loni Johnson, and VantaBlack invite you to come home: a place of comfort, of safety, of raw intimacy, where one can be right or wrong and called out on it while never being put out. As you enter through the doorway, you’ll be transported to a place of belonging; where deep roots hold fast to the memories that spark connection across the most staple gathering place for the culture – The Front Room. Together these three artists use their distinct multi-disciplinary practices to erect and consecrate a space that centers liberation from the deep social practice of self-containment and self-negation. A house is nothing but walls. However, a home is an intimate space that frees us from the labor of adaptation while also utilizing arrangement to guide interaction. The arrangement acts as a mirror, reflecting our placement and interaction with the world. Their collective work of material practice produces a place of reconciliation as we navigate through identity and memory.Friday’s use of spatially responsive iconography centers the celebration of Blackness at home, through the home. The visuals bring forth the feel, the smell, the inherited practices; so, you are surrounded by familiarity and shared recognition. Friday archives into the DNA of the home continued customs turned traditions.
Loni Johnson builds a place of transition through her altar work, which serves as a representation of the throughline connecting generations. Johnson turns our homes into an ancestral meeting place – where we open ourselves and build intimacy in the most inviting of spaces. Johnson guides us in adorning our walls with history and making use of negative space as the canvas for the future stories yet untold.
VantaBlack’s work reminds us that the boundaries of the walls surrounding us do not reflect the expansiveness of the intimate spaces we commune in. The home you’ll navigate through today becomes a reflection of space reserved to connect and ground community. The bricks of St. Louis meld into Miami-Dade stucco, not as unfinished fragments but as a mnemonic that destination isn’t tied down materially, it envelops us in the reverence of taking space.
Friday, Loni Johnson, and VantaBlack bring attention to the practice of living. Their work invites you to physically maneuver through The Front Room and to venture deeper into the home, making you conscious of your own experience. You’ll feel the heavy foot traffic of the lives lived in each room, of the moments shared through joy, grief, and growth. You’ll reflect on your own memories encompassed by the shell of the houses you’ve moved through. You won’t walk out from the same place you were welcomed in.
The Front Room is placement and connection; it’s spiritual permanence in a transitionary room; it is the labor of love to turn a place into a home – where traditions turn to sacred practice.Anita Sharma, researcher and founder of Women Artists Archive Miami, penned “An Essay by Anita Sharma on Comfort and Care” after taking in the opening reception for The Front Room.Acknowledgement: The Front Room was made possible with generous support from Oolite Arts and Commissioner; and the exhibition video was directed by Juan Luis Matos of Preguntas Studio. New World School of the Arts was created by the Florida Legislature as a Center of Excellence in the performing and visual arts. It is an educational partnership of Miami-Dade County Public Schools, Miami Dade College and University of Florida.