Is “absurd” a meaningful lens through which to view our time? For Melanie Prapopoulos, founder and director of the CAMP Gallery in North Miami, the answer is yes, and, indeed what’s more, “absurd” is a signpost from earlier times that may have us thinking more deeply about our own day.
Many curators ask artists to reference ideas, thoughts or events for a show. Prapopoulos takes that a step further, calling artists to create works inspired by books, plays or other literature. She references the days when painters and sculptors, such as the Impressionists, were friends with journalists, poets, and intellectuals. All attended the same salons, coffee houses or perhaps the bar at the Paris cabaret Folies-Bergère, drawing ideas and inspiration from one another.
For this year’s fiber show, “Women Pulling at The Threads of Social Discourse: Don’t Be Absurd,” the artists chose among the works of Albert Camus, Simone de Beauvoir, Samuel Beckett, José Saramago and Franz Kafka (yes, there will be bugs).
It’s the seventh edition where, each year, artists respond to a different inspiration. Last year they were asked to read the Aristophanes play, “Lysistrata.” Previous versions include “This is Not a Doll’s House,” responding to Henrik Ibsen’s play “A Doll’s House,” and “A Room of Our Own,” inspired by “A Room of One’s Own,” the Virginia Woolf classic. In 2020 it was “The Flag Show,” marking the centennial of the women’s vote.
Each show aims to highlight women’s experiences – which can be harrowing – in a world where mostly men control its direction. The focus on what was formerly known as “women’s arts,” weaving, sewing, embroidery, knitting and construction that began in the domestic sphere, is a key part of CAMP’s mission and focus (CAMP is short for the Contemporary Art Modern Project).
The CAMP Gallery invites the political. Prapopoulos started thinking about this year’s show before the most recent presidential election. “I felt that no matter who won, the election was going to be a crazy time, and there would be pushback,” she says adding she wanted the artists to feel free to use the literature to reflect on the current scene.
Representing more than 117 women and guest artists, the gallery also requested works in circular form.
The circular shape alludes to several meanings, including eternity and protection, says Prapopoulos. But it can be confining as well. “You can’t get out of a circle; we are going in circles politically – handcuffs are a circle.”
While the background and references are literary, the works burst with color and texture. Engaging and thought provoking; some seem fun, downright funny – some serious, some both at once.
An installation by Sascha Mallon includes, “Versatile Whatever Happens Lavender Pillow,” which shows mysterious towers – one with a single eye. It is enchanting and disturbing. A companion, “Versatile Escapist Lavender Pin Cushion,” sports a vibrant green bug. The installation references Kafka (“The Metamorphosis”) says Amy Arechavaleta, CAMP Gallery head of communications, as well as Saramago’s dystopian novel “Blindness.” Still, the white fabric and beautiful stitching hints toward hope. “Instead of accepting the doom found in Kafka’s works (Mallon) rewrites the endings by allowing for both a rebirth and escape from the environments Kafka creates,” writes Prapopoulos about the work. “In so doing, she refuses the bleak reality of both the past and now and instead takes control of her experience in worlds bound within the absurd.”
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Two knitted works by Ewa Dąbkowska, “Chill Evening,” and “No Chill Noon,” one blue, one shading into orange, both gaze at the viewer with eloquent eyes. The blue piece highlights the interior life and how we are confined in our own minds, says Arechavaleta, who was closely involved in curating and installing the exhibit. The second one gives hope, like a sunrise with eyes.” “If we look outward at the beauty that surrounds us, we find comfort in it,” she says.
One joy of every CAMP Gallery show is the level of craft and artistry in the works – artists taking the materials to places they have never been before: twisting, cutting, assembling, knitting, weaving, embroidering and felting fibers with found objects, feathers and words.
With its many eyes, strange, and sometimes endearing insects, and odd juxtapositions, the absurd shades into the surreal. Hollis Hickerson’s “Milk and Bread,” a felted white hare with human hands and eyes seems like the stuff of dreams. One can’t help but consider how the psychic and intuitive suffuse many of the works.
Still, the show has a real-life moment that might also be termed absurd. Empty embroidery hoops are hung among the works – mute testimony about the difficulty some offshore artists had shipping their pieces to the United States, says Prapopoulos. Transport costs skyrocketed, sometimes putting shipping out of reach. Meanwhile the Trump administration’s multi-country tariffs created confusion. Though original artworks are tagged as exempt, some foreign post offices were unwilling to process works, she says. Those that didn’t make it to the show will be displayed on the Artsy and Artnet websites, notes Prapopoulos
Some works speak strongly to division. Brenda Kuong’s “The Absurd Death of Celebration” is a good size embroidery hoop separated into two – on one side are ruffed Europeans in black on a brocade background. Indigenous Peruvians are on the other side, carrying a sacred mummy – a practice the Spanish wanted to stamp out.
An especially poignant work, “Blindness” by Mabelin Castellanos, shows what looks like a family with several children watching a helicopter in the sky. One can’t help wondering if the helicopter is friend or foe, bringing rescue or fear.
At one point, the visual and literary came together after CAMP Gallery sales director Nicole Zambrano was inspired to connect the gallery with a local poetry group, Pop Up Poetry MIA.
“I loved the idea,” says Prapopoulos, “and she ran with it.” Some of the poets came to the opening, others a bit later – all wrote poems based on an artwork that spoke to them. Then, in mid-November the poets returned to the gallery to present their work.
Prapopoulos says its something she’s always wanted and a collaborative idea she hopes to continue. “. . . The whole gallery set in this interdisciplinary concept – fiber artists and literary artists inspired by what they saw.”
IF YOU GO
What: “Women Pulling at The Threads of Social Discourse: Don’t Be Absurd”
When: 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday or by appointment. Closed Sundays and Mondays. Through Saturday, Dec. 20, 2025.
Where: The CAMP Gallery, 791 NE 125th St., North Miami
Cost: Free
Information: (786) 953-8807 and The CAMP Gallery
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