Living in Miami is a lot like the final stages of hypothermia.

The final stages of the condition, where the body tricks itself into feeling warmth and comfort, only to then quietly kill you, is the best way I can describe contemporary life in Miami. This metaphor, however, stands in stark contrast to how Miami is understood by non-locals: a place marketed through excess, spectacle and indulgence. This fantasy obscures the precarity underneath, contributing to the instability faced by the people who call the city home.

In Hyperthermia, I examine the language that surrounds my “hometown” of Miami, FL, from the accurate, to the half-true, and the downright absurd and offer a counternarrative. Functioning as a critique, I harness the language and stereotypes as material, constructing scenes drawn from my lived experience, bridging Miami as it is lived and as it is assumed to be. Having watched Miami shift from swampland to a future Atlantis, I return to the memories from my childhood and teenage years, the ones before the flood of the concrete jungle, staging moments that sit between recollection and construction. The stereotypes remain– vice city, vacation central, a playground of bottles, beaches, bikinis, and BBLS– but they are repurposed to reveal their hollowness, exposing the ways they flatten and unravel against the weight of the lives and histories of those who call the city home.

Through photographs, installation, stop motion animation and sculpture I share a Miami I know and love. Embracing all its contradictions, acknowledging the changes, and making space for care and memory, this body of work pushes against the dominant narratives to reveal a more grounded understanding of the city. There is nothing like the 305 in the US, the city resists the nation's fixed national identity, and its future feels increasingly uncertain. This body of work reframes the city from within, confronting the realities and perceptions while remaining accountable to the people who call it home.

A reckoning for the city of Miami, Hyperthermia is both a warning and a love letter. From a proud member of the 305, this work exists at the intersection of grief and allegiance. It mourns what has already been lost and twisted—the neighborhoods swallowed by rising costs, slowly eroded shorelines, the fuse of Latine and Caribbean culture diluted by waves of Northern influence and gentrification—while fiercely celebrating what persists. Art Deco architecture, raw sandy beaches, neighborhood fruit stands, some of the cultural staples and institutions, memorialized in images are an act of preservation, an insistence that Miami’s stories, voices, and rhythms matter beyond its perception from outsiders. At its core, this project wrestles with contradiction: holding onto the magic city while confronting its uncertain future, celebrating its absurdities while refusing to let them define it. Through Hyperthermia, I map the Miami I know—the one that raised me, shaped me, and continues to flow through my veins—before it slips entirely beneath the surface.

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