MOCA Makers Legacy Series: Body as Archive

A hands-on drawing workshop examines the body as a living archive, using movement, memory and observation as tools for visual documentation.

MOCA Makers Legacy Series: Body as Archive takes place Saturday, February 14 at the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, as part of the museum’s Black History Month programming. The workshop is part of MOCA’s Legacy Series: Archive as Practice, a collaborative curatorial project with Black Miami-Dade, the history and creative studio founded by local historian Nadege Green. Centered on the idea of the body as a vessel of lived history, the session reframes figure drawing as a method for recording gesture, rhythm and presence rather than static form.

Participants will draw from a live dancer alternating between motion and stillness, with Miami-based performing artist Clinton “Tazz” Harris serving as the model. Harris is a member of the Peter London Global Dance Company and has performed widely across South Florida and internationally. The workshop is led by teaching artist Melanie Oliva, whose multidisciplinary practice explores memory, place and collective creative processes. Together, the session invites participants to consider how bodies carry history and how drawing can function as an act of witnessing and archival practice.