Opening Reception: Cristina Lei Rodriguez-Baroque Islands

A new exhibition explores painting as a layered, immersive landscape during the opening reception for Cristina Lei Rodriguez: Baroque Islands at Miami Dade College’s Hialeah Campus Art Gallery.

Presented by the Museum of Art and Design at MDC (MOAD), the exhibition features new and recent paintings by Miami-raised artist Cristina Lei Rodriguez, whose multidisciplinary practice spans sculpture, installation, photography, and painting. In Baroque Islands, the focus turns specifically to painting, revealing densely built surfaces composed of beads, paint, lacquer, and other materials. Each work functions as its own “island,” where shimmering layers suggest both constructed and natural environments while inviting viewers into alternate, richly textured worlds.

Drawing from personal and cultural geographies that include Miami, Cuba, Japan, and Hawai‘i, Rodriguez’s work reflects an expansive understanding of baroque aesthetics. The exhibition embraces the baroque not only as a historical style rooted in contrast, embellishment, and emotion, but as a contemporary sensibility shaped by hybridity, place, and sensory abundance. Lush color, intricate detail, and overlapping notions of landscape echo the artist’s lived experience and the environments that continue to inform her practice.

The opening reception for Cristina Lei Rodriguez: Baroque Islands takes place Tuesday, January 20. Refreshments will be served.