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 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?”
As much as the built environment serves as a space of hybridity and creolization, so does the natural environment of South Florida. Tapping into the histories of Maroonage and the communities of enslaved people finding liberation within Florida's landscape, the paintings in this exhibition visualize bodies camouflaging amongst the lush flora of the region. Amplifying the stories of the Salt Water railroad, a journey through Florida's wilderness to freedom in the Caribbean; and stories of Seminole Maroon communities, these works reframe our relationship with the natural world. It places these intersectional identities in the landscape as a place of refuge. There is a deep sense of belonging as these diasporic communities take root in this landscape where the foreign and familiar dance, merging into one unified rhythm.
Driftwood embraces the multilayered histories and experiences of South Florida’s transient diasporic communities. Bodies become borderless as they dance amongst the landscape merging into a creolized collage of being; creating new identities and a sense of home. Craft and culture embody this movement and influence we see materialized in the build and natural environment of Florida, embedding the often hidden histories of Black communities of the region.
Images by Macbeth Studio