The Cloaking of the statues of Ponce de Leon at the Torch of Friendship and Christopher Columbus behind the Bayfront Park Amphitheatre in Miami, Florida, 2019

"For a temporary public art intervention, I designed patterns appropriating the aesthetics of European botanical illustrations and Western commercial tropical prints to cover colonizers statues. The design that covered Ponce de Leon is based on the manchineel tree, used by the Calusa natives to poison the arrow that killed Ponce, whereas the design covering Columbus features castor plant (brought to the Americas by the enslaved, who knew how to successfully distill the potent toxin ricin in order to use the plant’s healing properties) alongside ropesaraguey and yaupon holly, plants used in traditions of purging, cleansing, casting evil spirits away or protection." - Joiri Minaya