Inner City Paradox

The journey is the destination in Little Haiti art project

By Angie Hargot

Maze by Skip Van Cel. Photo courtesy of Skip Van Cel

Just meander down the potholed Little Haiti road, so neglected it has almost been reduced to gravel, at the end of the desolate, dead-end row of warehouses. Four huge dogs come barreling out of a nearby warehouse, seemingly hell-bent on jumping right in the window of the car.

Each positions itself at a compass point, immobilizing the vehicle. Down the street, gospel music booms from a huge subwoofer in a shop’s doorway. The concert is made more poignant by a bird and crickets in the unkempt grass that strangles a chain-link fence. The smell of an empty lot in summer, something like weeds mixed with languor. It’s one that Miami natives know well.

Despite the signs, all abandoned lots seem the property of tag players, after-school brawlers and feral cats.

But on a steamy Monday, there are no cardboard forts on this lot. Only a swarm of shopping carts loaded with the treasures of the homeless and a lonely art project call this land home.

Moments later, the dogs ramble away, looking bored. They pause every once in a while to look back and make sure you’re no one of interest. Artist Skip Van Cel had warned that dog biscuits were the price of admission.  

The project is called Maze, and aptly so. It consists of a 9-foot-tall, 66.6-foot-long portion of chain-link fence, topped with barbed wire. It lies at a disconcerting angle in the middle of an abandoned lot at 290 N.W. 72nd Terrace.

The work stands as the artist’s commentary on the country’s ongoing immigration conflict and is tribute to the truth found in the journey. The Maze, he says, is not the piece itself but the winding ghetto streets that lead to it. The ever-bending Miami grid lines form a sometimes confusing path. To view the work, one must abandon the safety of the main thoroughfares, leaving behind the promise of witnesses for the one-way streets and dead-end roads.

Although a formidable obstacle to climb over, the fence can simply be walked around, illustrating another point: Barriers to immigration not only can be subverted, but will be.

Van Cel placed his piece here for that very reason. He wanted to defy the safe, traditional white-walled gallery space that can serve as grounds for manipulating the definition of art. The feeling of danger is intentional, he says.

The artist sought to capture the sentiment that many seeking a better life through immigration feel on a much more dangerous journey than a drive through Little Haiti.

“I’ve never colored within the lines,” Van Cel said. “Just getting people to go is a big deal. The viewer’s own experience, I want that to be the art.”

Perhaps paradoxically, Van Cel’s Web site (www.skipvancel.com) adds a warning to those about to venture out to see the project.

“Traveler's Advisory,” it reads. “Whenever traveling in an unfamiliar area, it is advisable to be cognizant and aware of your surroundings. Take note of suspicious individuals and their behavior. Be sure to keep all valuables locked and out of sight. If possible, keep a cellular phone with you for emergency contact.”

The viewer’s experience so far has definitely been individual. Van Cel recounted tales of art students who have used the piece as a makeshift bar, a homeless man who set up a four-poster bed next to it (complete with mirrors) and a man who, armed with a full set of golf clubs, spent time launching golf balls over it.

A lack of publicity about the work is also intentional, he says. He wanted people to stumble upon it. A short explanation of the project hangs from the fence that surrounds the lot. Although the gate leading into the lot is ajar, “No Trespassing” signs are posted next to the project’s description, illustrating the layers in place to keep people out — another depiction of the immigration problem.

And it has perfect timing.

According to the Office of Immigration Statistics, a total of 1,052,415 people got their green cards in 2007. The numbers reflect a 17 percent drop in legal immigration numbers over the previous year, attributed to administrative barriers — the Citizenship and Immigration Services agency recently has been criticized for increases in processing times for new immigrants. Last year, the office was reportedly flooded with applications in anticipation of extraordinary increases in filing fees. The delays will now have a special political repercussion as well — ultimately the timing will keep many new immigrants from becoming citizens in time to vote in the November general election.

It’s a poignant situation for many: The majority of immigrants who gained their citizenship last year, 59 percent, already lived in the United States when they were granted legal permanent residence, and most were approved based on a family relationship with a U.S. citizen. Most came from Mexico, with China and the Philippines rounding out the top three countries of origin.

That same agency estimated in a report released late last year that 11.6 million unauthorized immigrants were living in the United States as of January 2006, with almost half of them having entered the United States after the year 2000. The majority of illegal immigrants came from Mexico.

The debate over immigration control, renewed by the current presidential race, has been at the forefront of political chatter since a bill designed to control illegal immigration died in Congress last year.

“The government is constantly putting up fences,” Van Cel said, adding that as a South Florida native he has seen time and time again friends having trouble getting their citizenship.

Although he expects it to only stick around another few weeks, Van Cel’s piece now stands as evidence of the national crisis — Miami-style.

He constructed the piece on a 21,000-square-foot vacant lot soon after he bought it in June of last year. The artist and former publisher of The Biscayne Times sold the land in February for a little less than half a million dollars.

The parcel was purchased by developers Emerald Terrace Limited Partnership and the Gatehouse Group. With the purchase of the plot that Maze stands on, the company has acquired the entire block, except for the small property immediately to the east. Over the last few years, the city of Miami has granted the company a handful of permits and exceptions to build The Emerald, a 13-story, 124-unit low-income family residential building.

Those special exceptions included an early request to build the residential building in a commercial district in the first place. In early 2006, discussion took place about the potentially hazardous nature of the industrial environment, city documents show. The city’s zoning board initially denied the application to build it at all. Formerly known as Emerald Place, in July of last year the project attained permission to cut 72 parking spaces — a third of the required parking for a low-income residential building — by promising to construct 24 nearby street spots.

The basis for the request sparked a debate among Miami commissioners that incidentally illustrates both Van Cel’s premise and another trend among immigrants: the fencing-in of low-income areas.

Those levels of parking aren’t needed for the Emerald project, it was argued, because low-income families aren’t likely to afford more than one car per unit.

The debate smacks of hegemony, gentrification and prejudice. Another danger is that the trend of reducing low-income parking teeters precariously on the brink of a self-fulfilling prophecy for a county with a failing public transportation system: With a diminished capacity for residents to commute to work, income will inevitably remain, well, low.

At least for the Emerald project, residents and commissioners alike agreed that low-income residents need parking too. Ultimately, in this case the end justified the means.

“This is Little Haiti,” Commissioner Michelle Spence-Jones said at that meeting in defense of the developer’s request. “There’s a lot of reasons why we need more housing in Little Haiti, so whatever I can do to increase the housing in Little Haiti is what I’m trying to do, so for me, I don’t have any issues. The comment came up about public transportation and poor people not having more than one car, and that is true … most of the time. I can say, though, in Little Haiti, that is — that particular community does use the bus system a lot, so I don’t think that that’s really going to be an issue for them.”

As with much of his art, Van Cel said, the project has taken on a life of its own, transforming the immigration issue into a thread in the fabric of Little Haiti life. Focus shifted to “the incongruity of the piece where you wouldn’t expect art” and the journey to view it, he said, attesting that the developments springing up in the area have changed the piece too.

“It used to be more spiritual,” Van Cel said. “It was this desolate area near a power plant. You could hear the noise of I-95 in the distance. It’s become more complicated as the developments move in.”

Comments? E-mail angie@miamisunpost.com