MADE OF THIS

Miami Shores, FL - CLAUG Creative Studio is proud to present Root & Rise: A Celebration of Memory, Persistence, and Identity, a group exhibition bringing together eight artists whose practices share a common foundation: a belief in the primacy of material, the intelligence of the hand, and the enduring power of what comes from the earth.

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The exhibition takes its name from the tension -and the harmony- between where things begin and where they go. Rope, beeswax, fiber, pigment, wood, acrylic, graphite, wax, the materials in Root & Rise are not incidental. They are the work. They carry memory, labor, and meaning in their very substance. And together, they form a conversation about origins: of identity, of form, of the forces that hold us together and allow us to grow.

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Root & Rise opens during Pride Month, a time of particular significance for CLAUG and its founder, Carlos Andrade, who alongside his husband has been a long-standing advocate for the rights and dignity of LGBTQ+ people. The exhibition honors that spirit, not through declaration, but through the artists it gathers: voices shaped by migration, cultural inheritance, personal loss, neurodiversity, and the quiet courage of making art that is entirely one's own.

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The Work

Kandi Stirman brings her monumental rope sculpture, a large-scale installation that transform nylon, jute, and fiber into works of extraordinary visual presence. Rooted in a lifelong relationship with rope and craft, Stirman's pieces celebrate texture, movement, and the enduring beauty of materials that have been used by human hands across centuries and cultures.

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Salomon Khammi presents selections from Urban Code, a series of thirteen encaustic and oil paintings on wood, each 12 × 12 inches, created nearly a decade ago in Toronto during one of the most difficult periods of his life, and never before exhibited publicly. Made in layers of molten beeswax and oil, built up slowly and fused with heat, these intimate panels are peaceful despite the weight of what produced them. They are quiet, earthbound, and impossible to look away from.

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Francisca Garriga works at the intersection of color, geometry, and perception. Her pieces unfold in layers, forms emerge and dissolve, patterns vibrate, volumes breathe, creating an organic rhythm in which color transcends its own surface and expands beyond what is visible. Her work invites the viewer on a journey from sensation toward structure.

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Carlos Andrade, artist and founder of CLAUG, presents works from his ongoing practice in sculpture and mixed media. Andrade transforms found and recycled materials into objects that speak to memory, identity, and human connection, circles that recur as symbols of continuity, surfaces that reflect the viewer back to themselves.

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Tyler Oviedo presents works from unfollowedbyfunction, his ongoing platform and philosophy exploring form liberated from utility, regulation, and convention. Trained in architecture and working through digital fabrication, Oviedo creates objects that occupy the space between sculpture, design, and spatial intervention, asking what form can be when it answers only to itself.

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Michael Amquy brings abstract paintings charged with inner spiritual energy, cultural memory, and personal history. The son of a Lakota Brazilian father and a Ukrainian mother, Amquy grew up navigating multiple traditions and found in painting a language uniquely his own. His canvases channel emotion and nature with an urgency and directness that is unmistakably felt.

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Migdalia Salazar presents photographic works built with dimensional acrylic, translucent volumes that make each image resemble a floating sculpture, extending the language of geometric abstraction into three dimensions. 

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Felix Rios contributes works that distills visual experience to its most essential elements. Using only vertical and horizontal stripes, Rios investigates repetition, spatial tension, and the optical vibrations that arise when the eye searches for stability — transforming a reduced visual language into an active, living field of perception.

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Opening Exhibition

Root & Rise: A Celebration of Memory, Persistence, and Identity
Opening Reception: Thursday, June 25, 2026 at 7:00 PM
CLAUG Creative Studio
9703 NE 2nd Ave, Miami Shores, FL 33138
www.claug.art
Free and open to the public

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Press Inquiries & Image Requests:
Milena Brown | info@claug.art | +1 (645) 243-0333

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