The Deepest Blue

The Deepest Blue
^{PortMiami - Terminal F, 1015 N America Way, 2nd Floor, Terminal F, Carnival Cruise‍
Collection of the Miami-Dade County Art in Public Places program, made possible with the support of the Art in Public Places Trust, the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs and the Cultural Affairs Council, the Miami-Dade County Mayor and Board of County Commissioners. 
Dimension: 36 ceramic panels 50 x 175 x 3 in. (overall); 14 x 16 x 3 in. (each)}

Juana Valdés immersed thirty-six ceramic panels in cobalt, turquoise, aqua, and teal glazes to render a topographical relief of the Atlantic seafloor stretching from the Ivory Coast to the Caribbean, a poetic mapping of the complex, overlapping terrains that shape her Afro-Cuban American identity. Installed on the banks of Biscayne Bay, the work speaks across geographies and histories, with the phrase un solo mar (“a single sea”) inscribed as both invocation and assertion: a connective oceanic body that unites fragmented pasts and diasporic trajectories.

“The Deepest Blue” reframes memory and mobility through bathymetry rather than imperial cartography. It inscribes the African diaspora not across national boundaries, but along submarine topographies, privileging geologic registers over heroic surface narratives. Echoing Derek Walcott’s refrain that “the sea is History,” the work functions as a nontraditional cenotaph for those lost in the Middle Passage, legible through depth contours rather than figural statuary. The installation invokes Walcott’s provocation—“Where are your monuments…? In that grey vault. The sea”—to reposition the ocean as both memorial and archive.

By translating bathymetric data and archival research into ceramic relief, the work deploys contemporary technologies—digital mapping, topographical modeling, and precision fabrication—to reconceptualize how history is spatialized and visualized. This process aligns with what I term a “spatial and material pedagogy,” embedding decolonial historiography into civic architecture. Installed within a technologically optimized cruise terminal—engineered for biometric processing, advanced screening, and seamless passenger flow—the work introduces friction, inviting a slowed, contemplative encounter with the ocean’s stratified pasts. Infrastructure becomes inscription: as travelers embark, they move across a ceramic terrain that insists mobility is historically sedimented, and that technology can serve not only acceleration but remembrance.

^{This strategy extends my broader inquiry into how public space can operate as a site of historical reflection and diasporic encounter. Internationally, the work’s conceptual and material framework has been situated within platforms committed to critical epistemologies. My participation in the XXIII Bienal de Arte Paiz (Guatemala, 2023)—bebí palabras sumergidas en sueños—embedded the work within a curatorial assembly centered on feminist, Indigenous, and Afro-diasporic thought. As both exhibiting artist and curatorial collaborator, I contributed to a biennial recognized as the sixth-oldest globally and Central America’s most significant contemporary art event. These platforms operate as transnational circuits of legitimation, enabling research-based practices to circulate, accrue meaning, and enter enduring collections and archives within global discourse.}

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