Urban Shrines: Ritual, Memory, and Migration in Miami (2015–2020)
In 1978, a Miami Herald article recounted neighbors’ outrage over a Cuban family’s shrine, fearing it would devalue property in South Miami. That moment reflects the tension between visibility and belonging that continues to shape the city’s urban fabric. What was once perceived as intrusion has become an integral layer of Miami’s evolving Latinx identity.
Urban Shrines approaches domestic altars and religious offerings through a contemporary visual storytelling practice, emphasizing the interplay between private devotion and public space, migration and permanence, and spirituality and the socio-economic realities of urban life. The series presents these altars not as ethnographic records, but as sites of negotiation and reflection, inviting viewers to consider the layers of cultural memory and identity embedded in everyday urban space.
Photographed from 2015 to 2020, the works focus on syncretic Latinx spiritual practices, including the veneration of saints such as Santa Barbara and San Lázaro, whose significance bridges Catholic and Yoruba (Santería) traditions. By highlighting composition, spatial context, and material presence, the images construct a visual dialogue about how belief systems inhabit architecture, sidewalks, lawns, and property lines, and how these gestures articulate a persistent Latinx presence in the city.
The shrines become active assertions of memory, resilience, and identity, revealing how urban life is shaped by migration, faith, and cultural negotiation. Through this contemporary lens, viewers are invited to engage with Miami’s layered histories, encounter the poetic tension between visibility and invisibility, and reflect on the ways everyday rituals transform the city into a living canvas of Latinx cultural presence and collective memory.
