DRIFTWOOD:
THE FLORIDA PRIZE 2025
Orlando Museum of Art| Orlando, FL | 2025
Set in the atmosphere of the Florida Everglades, Cornelius Tulloch’s 2025 Florida Prize in Contemporary Art presentation, Driftwood, immerses viewers into the often hidden histories of the natural landscape and built environment of this region and its deep connections to the Caribbean. This body of work traverses the stories of this transient landscape to highlight the dance between culture, identity, place, and craft that is represented by the Everglades and the many Black and Indigenous stories that have called home.
The main installation, Porch Passages: Creole Collage, reimagines the shotgun house, a staple vernacular architecture of the U.S. South and Caribbean. Showcasing an architectural language of creolization, this structure influenced by the merging of craft and culture embeds the stories of Miami’s Black and Caribbean community into it’s materiality. Through a series of mixed media wood collages created in collaboration with the archives of Black Miami Dade and it’s Founder Nadege Green. The Stories of Black Miami Dade become enshrined in memory and depiction of the architectural form. The central seating of the reimagined shotgun house creates a porch pace, creating a moment for reflections, preservation, and imagination. Not only does the installation archive, and document these stories, but it provides a space for them to be actively lived, performed, and preserved for future generations. It prompts us to ask, “How will we continue to archive our own stories?”
(Images by Macbeth Studio)