Rachel Lee
Marine Stadium Project Statement
With the Marine Stadium’s history and recent acknowledgment as a historic place, I wanted to consider the effort made to prevent demolishing the stadium and how often these places are forgotten. Regularly seen around Miami-Dade County, abandoned buildings and construction sites throughout the city and suburbs are familiar to those of us born and raised here. I grew up surrounded by it and came to find comfort in these places that were left behind by time. The more our neighborhoods change, the more we are reminded of aging and its inevitable effect on us physically and mentally, as well as its changes to our surroundings. Though developers are obsessed with tearing down the old and building new, useless high-rises, I believe a lot of us locals would rather rejuvenate what we have to serve the people who actually live in Miami and make it what it is. Through a personal narrative and fascination with decaying objects, I worked on the Marine Stadium chair by laying on torn up fabrics, yarn, papers, print outs, and stuffing to replicate fungus, and miscellaneous junk that references outdated media from my childhood as a nod to my obsession with ‘90s nostalgia and remembering the past that brought me here.
