the hialeah souvenir

On the basis of previous work by artists Ernesto Oroza and Gean Moreno on the general commercialization of souvenirs and their standardization across locality, we have been exploring what would be a specific Hialeah souvenir. Would it be a unique object or a standardized one? To that effect, we have been exploring the history and practices of crafts and manufacture in the city.

Although at one point a site for the unique production of souvenirs for Miami -NOT for Hialeah- , the city now houses a reassembling and distribution center of generic souvenirs made in China. Both before and now, however, Hialeah remained invisible in this process of production and in the branding of a Miami to which remains peripheral.

By both deconstructing the souvenir­ as fetish and engaging diverse groups of community residents, overwhelmingly immigrants from Spanish-speaking countries, mostly Cuba, in a quest to re­imagine the city not as a periphery but as a center, as well as themselves as new citizens. We are planning to address the double consciousness of a post-industrial community that largely sees itself through the eyes of others, and then move on to a second phase. At that point,  HICCUP will collaborate with local souvenir factories to produce and commercialize objects of labor, practice, and locality that are at once aesthetic and place­-making, while generating a reflection over representation and self-­representation.

A first step on this direction was our commission of a Hialeah-HICCUP cake, encouraging the creativity of the cake maker. Cakes are paradigmatic of Hialeah's culinary culture, and are often elaborate structures commissioned by clients to cake shops, following detailed instructions as to what the cake should represent. More generally, however, we plan to focus on tools as embodiments of a labor invisibility that extends to the city itself within its region.