When we think of art, it’s easy to focus on what we see: the final piece, the polished surface, the completed gesture. But what about the hands behind the work? The countless hours, repetitive movements, and rituals that infuse each material with meaning? In the 2025 Florida Prize in Contemporary Art, artists Amanda Linares, Kelly Joy Ladd, and Nathalie Alfonso invite us to examine the unseen labor behind their practice and to experience how materiality and process shape the stories they tell.
Amanda Linares: Excavating Memory Through Matter
For Amanda Linares, materials are more than just tools; they are a means of expression. They are fragments of time and place, layered like sediment in the soil. The Cuban-born, Miami-based artist works with concrete, soil, wood, ceramics, and found objects that evoke the landscapes of her homeland and her family’s migration story. Her immersive installation, Yo vengo de todas partes, y hacia todas partes voy, inspired by a verse from José Martí, brings this approach to life.
The work that stands as the focal point is a graphite drawing of her great-grandfather’s house in Spain, yet pieces are carved away from it in a sculptural style that parallels the geological “sediments” dispersed throughout the rest of the gallery. These include things made of concrete, fabric, resin, and soil that exist as memories in the material sense, following us wherever we go, regardless of the pieces we’ve left behind. To Linares, all materials are remnants of the past, ghosts of what came before and a trace that connects us to our history.
By utilizing remnants from her own family and friends’ materials, she aims to spark these curiosities in the viewer, blending their stories with her own. As one moves through the space, it provokes the viewer to consider which memories are worth keeping and which are better left behind. Each step through her installation blurs boundaries, much like the soil beneath our feet mixes cultures and histories over time.
Kelly Joy Ladd: Infusing Energy Into Paper
For Kelly Joy Ladd, the process is a meditative, sacred act. A paper artist based in Florida, Ladd’s practice is shaped by health challenges and a deep exploration of her connection to self, others, and the universe. After a traumatic head injury altered her vision, she turned to art and meditation practices as a way to heal and reconnect.
Her 2025 Florida Prize piece, Divine Love, builds on that journey. Ladd encourages viewers to slow down and be present, to experience the work rather than just observe it. The piece radiates a sense of peace and spiritual connection. Qualities she instills through a layered process of writing sacred words —such as Love, Joy, and Compassion — onto each surface before adding cut paper, glue, and form.
She believes energy can be embedded into materials, and through rituals like burning journals, collecting soil, and charging crystals, she transforms ordinary elements into vessels of intention. Ladd’s works in this exhibition expand into elemental and ancestral realms. Each one is a quiet offering meant to reconnect us with the sacred forces that sustain us.
Nathalie Alfonso: Revealing the Labor We Overlook
Colombian-born artist Nathalie Alfonso makes the physical act of drawing a performance in itself. Her monumental site-specific works begin with a simple gesture, a stroke of charcoal or pastel, repeated thousands of times through controlled, rhythmic movements that push the limits of endurance. Alfonso’s piece LineScape—Onset fills the gallery wall with faint lines and grids, evoking both a misty Florida landscape and the bones of a building under construction.
But behind every mark are hours of labor: scrubbing, erasing, layering color, and doing it all again. Alfonso’s approach is rooted in her history as a competitive athlete in Colombia and later as a domestic worker in the U.S., where cleaning became a way to study gesture, repetition, and the invisible labor that keeps our world running.
By transforming these motions into art, Alfonso reframes overlooked work as both generative and poetic. She invites us to see the energy, sweat, and care that leave subtle traces on a wall or in our daily lives. In her work, the process is not just preparation for the final piece; it is the piece.
A Celebration of What Lies Beneath
Amanda Linares, Kelly Joy Ladd, and Nathalie Alfonso each remind us that art is not only about what we see, but what we feel. Concrete, soil, paper, and pastel become conduits for love, memory, ritual, and care. They show us that the labor of making is a story worth telling, and that every material holds echoes of those who touched it.
