[Narrator] "Art Loft" is brought to you by the Friends of South Florida PBS.

"Art Loft."

It's the pulse of what's happening in our own backyard, as well as the taste of the arts across the United States.

In this episode, echoes of home, love, and grief.

We explore Painter Ema Ri's inner landscapes.

Fountainhead introduces us to Merik Goma, a photographer creating sets for his subjects.

And we meet the Cuban-American artist Gustavo Acosta in the film "To Build Another City."

Love and light is a phrase that deeply describes the painter Ema Ri.

The Miami native has been working for over a decade learning their craft and mining landscapes, both external and interior.

One of the things that I pride myself in is in my resilience to pull through even the most difficult circumstances in my life.

And I think that's where the direction of my work is going: exploring and also talking about resilience that I see in nature, but resilience that I also see in the female figures in my life that are here and no longer here.

Hi, I'm Ema.

I'm a visual artist based in Miami.

Conceptual thinking in my practice evolved a lot more.

Without me even realizing it, whenever I see a material, I sort of put myself in that material.

And flowers, for me, are very fragile, beautiful, delicate things, but they're very connected to the spiritual realm, more than humans could ever.

But I like how flowers on a microscale remind me of aspects of ourselves, of the human body and the human spirit.

The work that I'm doing in this residency through MOAD at MDC Padron Campus is towards my solo show in the spring.

And the work is exploring this idea of resilience.

And I definitely could foresee now that the flowers that I've been creating are more like weeds.

And when I realized that that was what was going on, I really liked that idea, that these flowers are weeds that just blossom, rain or shine.

Whether manmade decided to, you know, cover this land with pavements or an architectural building, nature will always find a way to exist in the space where it used to.

Some of the paintings that you'll see here, they're very reminiscent of that notion, penetrating through ground, or being destroyed from the ground and being torn apart, but then creating new life in the process of that.

It's all metaphors when you come to think about it.

And a lot of it has to do, again, with me, you know, imposing myself onto these things and seeing myself in a plant that is falling apart, or a plant that, you know, is still sprouting, even though it's in an environment that's not conducive for it to thrive fully.

But it'll find a way.

It always does.

When I was little, I used to draw with my parents' car keys on the wall.

And it was something that I discovered by chance.

I would do these little small drawings that weren't really, you know, noticeable because it was lightly marked.

But then over time, those marks would get darker and darker 'cause the metal rubbing would oxidize.

And so things like that I bring into my practice again, and I now create these abstract environmental drawings, only with brass brushes.

And brass brushes are only used to polish rusted pipes.

But I like using tools or materials in an unorthodox kind of manner.

And I think in a sense, that has to do with me wanting to, you know, not feel constrained by my limitations.

You know, not letting things hold me back, and finding ways to keep, you know, moving forward.

I feel like I'm completing, like, a full circle.

When I decided to go back to school, I was turning 24.

And in my past I used to have, you know, holdups about pursuing an academic career or, you know, just going to college.

I registered at MDC Wolfson Campus, and while I was there, I was majoring in environmental science.

I needed a little bit of a break from the math.

And so I took a drawing class as an elective and also to, like, you know, take a break.

And within the month of taking a Drawing 101 class, like, my professor, Siobhan McBride, she was the one that encouraged me to pursue art.

She helped me build a portfolio.

I applied to New World.

It was the only school that I applied to at the time because my heart was split.

My two passions have always been science and art.

You know, growing up, I wasn't really sure what direction to go to.

While I was at New World, I came into that school with an open mind.

So when I came out, my BFA work, I decided to, you know, look within.

And where that takes me is to my past.

And so I started to make works using drywall, 'cause for me, walls are an extension of the human body.

When I walk into a space, whether it's a gallery space or someone's home, I often find myself more interested in the footprints and the scratches that are left on the walls, the scars, the stains.

'Cause for me, it tells me the story of what happened in that space without someone having to tell me anything.

And I think that, again, it's like the scientist in me that's always curious to know what existed there before.

The work that I started to explore was all about hiding and blending in as a form of survival.

The thing I like the best about the work is it always makes you feel something.

And, of course, that's every artist's goal.

When you look at it, it takes you to a place that you didn't expect to go.

For me, for a lot of the paintings, when you're asking yourself, "Well, who's in there?"

the answer is always you.

My work definitely revolves around love and grief.

And so when I started to work with drywall, a lot of exploration had to do with just processing emotions.

And I think the breakthrough with drywall was realizing that when I peeled the skin of the wall, for me, it took me back to just being vulnerable.

You know, like, opening yourself so that other people could feel and see your pain.

For me, they become windows or vessels into the spiritual realm, and the finger paintings made with oil paints are the places where those things live in.

My work is personal, but it's because I really want to connect with, honestly, I just really want to connect with people.

I want to connect with the people that I know are not gonna be here anymore.

And that could be anyone.

It could be you, it could be people that I meet here.

You know, I think one of the beautiful things about this residency is that it's allowed me to be more open and vulnerable.

And in doing so, students now could have, like, faith in themselves again.

You know, 'cause some students have felt defeated in their own journey.

And sharing my journey and my struggles with them and how I'm able to overcome them by being real.

You know, not trying to be an idea that I know I'm not for the sake of fitting in.

I'm familiar with this work over a long period of time because they were my student in 2017, I think.

One of the things that I think is most important in the work in general is the evolution.

There was tremendous growth from work to work.

Chances taken, experiments.

And so for me, that's the measure of a really, really significant body of work.

So that's what I believe we have here.

The whole intention around these ephemeral flower sculptures are for people to interact with the work.

'Cause I want people to experience what I experience when I'm, you know, playing around with material.

And so I encourage people to stand on the installation, to leave their body imprint.

The whole point of that is to show that we're on the same situation.

We're on the same footing.

We live different lives, but we're both humans, and we're both hurting, and we're both, you know, trying to find love and trust and finding our way in this place.

And footprints and body prints is me trying to tell a viewer that there has been people before us that are dealing with the same journeys that we're dealing with today, and that you're not alone.

There's sort of this bridge between abstraction and representational.

Maybe the roots of it are in landscape, but it starts to become very, very much about the mark, the gesture, the accumulation of those marks.

From all of that to this comes the void.

So suddenly, in the middle of this work is a very mysterious, layered void out of the exploration of the abstraction and the mark making.

Who knew it was gonna end up there?

That's super exciting for me.

My HIV status and the virus in general does play a huge role in my work.

I was diagnosed in my early 30s.

After that, the pandemic happened, and then I lost my grandma.

I lost my studio.

I lost work.

I was just dealing with so much stuff and not really being able to channel it in a healthy way.

And so flowers came back into the picture.

And then eventually I realized that, like, you know, collecting flowers is not, it's not doing enough for me.

It's doing a part.

And so I decided to start making these finger paintings of abstract flowers.

And the result was that they would become flowers in distress, flowers in constant motion from its environment.

I'm inspired by everything all the time, but that's not why I come to the studio.

I come to the studio to learn about myself, to learn about the things that I'm not aware of yet.

Since my work is process based, I don't really have, like, a sketch of what I'm gonna do.

I come into the studio with complex emotions from the day-to-day, the grind, and I just start to let it out.

And so sometimes there are things that I'm subconsciously thinking of.

You know, my grandma or a specific moment from my childhood.

And I won't realize what I'm doing in the process of making it.

But then once I make the piece and I decide to stop, I just hang out with it for a bit.

And then eventually the colors sort of inform, you know, memory and senses.

And then once I start to pick up on that, then I know exactly where the work was taking me when I was producing the work.

And I find that to be really special and beautiful in its own way.

[Narrator] The Fountainhead Arts residency brings over 30 artists a year to spend time living and working in Miami.

Here, Photographer Merik Goma reflects on his time in residence.

[Merik] I'm oftentimes thinking about the slow read; when things are obscured in shadow and things are brought into closer focus, people have to take time.

People have an opportunity to take time with the work, and they see those things.

It becomes and opens up to be a broader kind of experience.

My practice is of storytelling and narrative.

It's driven by a psychological approach towards trying to understand myself and those around me.

I do this through constructing sets, the lighting itself as another character that drives the mood and the experience.

I have always been a collector of objects.

When we recognize an object from a certain period, it kind of conjures up a moment or experience for us.

And I really like to build on those histories and see the emotions that are coming from the sitter as they're trying to process and think through these things.

[Narrator] In this film from Eliecer Jimenez Almeida and producing partner Angelica Loucraft, we see the city of Miami and its architecture through the eyes of Cuban-American painter Gustavo Acosta.

Here's "To Build Another City."

The Midwest.

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"Art Loft" is brought to you by the Friends of South Florida PBS.