Vizcaya’s Kitchen and The Clafoutis Sonata:
An animated video installation by Caprali and Cinza Lua Studios
November 1, 2023 – April 29, 2024
MIAMI – A newly commissioned work is on view at Vizcaya Museum and Gardens from November 1, 2023, to April 29, 2024. Karla Caprali and Sophia Cabral (Caprali and Cinza Lua Studios) have transformed Vizcaya’s historic kitchen with a site-specific multimedia installation. Their work, titled “Vizcaya’s Kitchen and The Clafoutis Sonata,” melds history, storytelling, and animation to create an installation that brings Vizcaya’s historic kitchen to life. The opening reception will take place on Wednesday, November 1, 2023, at 7:00 p.m. and the exhibit will be on view through April 29, 2024.
“Vizcaya’s contemporary art exhibition series provides a vehicle for artists to respond to a historic site. This year we wanted to activate the kitchen, a space that was once full of life, but that has felt dormant. Our hope is to evoke life in the kitchen and stimulate our visitor’s imagination through the world of digital animation,” said Helena Gomez, Vizcaya’s Curator.
When Vizcaya’s patron, James Deering (1859-1925), was in residence over the winter season, the kitchen was a bustling space occupied by sounds, aromas, and people. Today, Vizcaya’s historic kitchen is one of the few spaces accessible to the public that reveals back-of-the-house functions and serves as the perfect stage for Caprali and Cabral’s project. The installation conjures up a reimagined working Gilded Age kitchen by weaving in playful animations with Vizcaya’s past.
Caprali, an acclaimed animator and filmmaker, and Cabral, a rising architectural designer bring together separate artistic practices to engage with a historic space in the physical and digital worlds. “Vizcaya’s Kitchen and The Clafoutis Sonata” incorporates a copper armature that connects video screens, each showing animations with independent storylines. These imaginative snippets of color and movement are the artists’ response to the universal truth that the kitchen is the heart of the home.
“Animating art breathes life into pixels, as copper structures conduct the symphony of space. Together, they blend the ephemeral and the tangible, defining the essence of our project,” commented Karla Caprali.
The artists draw inspiration from traditional cooking books, materials found in historic cookware and archival information about farming and staffing in Deering’s time, like the Head Chef Monsieur Theo Cazés and Swedish-born second cook Ella Holgerson. Long-time friend and collaborator, violinist Belinda Niling Stohner, has created and performed new music with Baby B Strings quartet to accompany the animated illustrations.
The Contemporary Arts Program (CAP) is supported by The Danielson Foundation, the Miami-Dade County Mayor and Board of County Commissioners, as well as anonymous donors; and is 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.
Learn more about this exhibit and Vizcaya’s Contemporary Arts Program online.
Opening Reception:
- Date: November 1, 2023
- Time: 7:00 – 9:00 pm (Program with Artists starts at 7:30 pm)
- Details: Tickets are available for a $5 charge, free for Vizcaya members.
DOWNLOAD PHOTOS AND VISUALS: CLICK HERE
For press inquiries and additional information, please contact Vizcaya’s Director of Marketing, Alex Serna, at Alejandra.serna@vizcaya.org or via phone at 305.860.8431.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Karla Caprali was born in the city of Belem, also known as the Edge of the Amazon, in Brazil, and now lives and works in Miami as an artist, animator, director and filmmaker. She has shown her work and attended Artist-In-Residence Programs in Brazil, the United States, Norway, Sweden, and Finland. Besides oil painting and drawing, she creates her animations by handcrafting drawings and using computer software and a 24-inch Wacom tablet to color and animate them. Most recently, she’s directed and produced the animated short film Life and the animated short documentary South of 5th.
Sophia Cabral is an architectural designer focused on sustainability and designed ecologies. Cabral holds a Master of Architecture from Florida International University, where she also taught architecture. She has worked in architecture firms in Miami, including Arquitectonica and Studio Roberto Rovira, and is now kick-starting her own design studio, Cinza Lua Studio, where she explores and materializes imaginative and unconventional projects.
ABOUT VIZCAYA’S CONTEMPORARY ARTS PROGRAM (CAP)
The Contemporary Arts Program (CAP) is a commission-based exhibition series that provides artists with the creative challenge to develop original, site-specific work in response to a historic site. Since 2006, CAP has provided our visitors with new ways of seeing the historic estate and strengthened relations with contemporary artists.
CAP was inspired by the dynamic, creative spirit that characterized Vizcaya’s inception one hundred years ago, and it continues James Deering’s tradition as a patron of the arts. From John Singer Sargent, a house guest who painted watercolors of the estate, to A. Stirling Calder, who sculpted the figures on the Barge, and Robert Winthrop Chanler, creator of the Swimming Pool Grotto ceiling mural, Vizcaya continues a dialogue between the historic and the contemporary. As was the case one hundred years ago, Vizcaya’s singular sense of place remains the point of departure for artists.
ABOUT VIZCAYA MUSEUM AND GARDENS
Vizcaya Museum and Gardens is a National Historic Landmark that preserves its cultural and environmental resources to engage people in connecting with the past, understanding the present and shaping the future. Built between 1914 and 1922 as the winter home of farming manufacturer James Deering, Vizcaya is one of the most intact remaining examples from this era in the United States, when the nation’s most successful entrepreneur-built estates were inspired by the stately homes of Europe. Vizcaya features a Main House filled with a decorative art collection, 10 acres of formal gardens, a rockland hammock (native forest), a mangrove shore, and a historic village that is being restored to tell Vizcaya’s full story and provide additional spaces for programs and community outreach, including those on agriculture. Vizcaya has been a community hub since it opened to the public in 1953; it welcomes 300,000 visitors annually.
Located on Biscayne Bay at 3251 South Miami Avenue, Vizcaya is open Wednesday through Monday from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Closed Tuesdays, Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Day. For more information, visit www.vizcaya.org, connect via social media, or call 305-250-9133.
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