Miami, January 16, 2026 – The Museum of Art and Design (MOAD) at Miami Dade College (MDC) presents Cristina Lei Rodriguez: Baroque Islands, an exhibition of new and recent paintings by the Miami-based artist. On view through Saturday, March 7, the exhibition opens with a reception on Tuesday, January 20, from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. at MDC’s Hialeah Campus. Working media is welcome.
“Cristina Lei Rodriguez’s paintings invite viewers into lush, immersive worlds shaped by memory, landscape, and material experimentation,” said Amy Galpin, PhD, MOAD’s Executive Director and Chief Curator. “We are honored to present this exhibition at MDC Hialeah and to offer our community the opportunity to experience the depth, complexity, and visual dynamism found in her practice.”
For the past several years, Cristina Lei Rodriguez has been combining sculpture, installation, and painting, and photographic scans in her work. As opposed to including different media, this exhibition offers a special opportunity to consider her painting practice, with its dense layers evoking a multitude of forms. Beneath each layer of material is another layer that offers a glimpse into an alternative world. Each painting is its own island, its own space, where a mix of materials from beads to paint and lacquer combine to make glistening surfaces that suggest both built and natural environments.
To create baroque art or to exist in a baroque space can mean many things. A term often associated with seventeenth-century Europe, baroque art and architecture took on new forms in the Americas. Baroque art can include a juxtaposition of contrasting elements as well as embellishment. It can be exuberant and emotional. Although it is most often used when speaking of historic visual, literary, and performance-based arts, manifestations of contemporary baroque exist all around us, including in the work of Cristina Lei Rodriguez.
Raised in Miami, the artist’s family lineage extends to Cuba and Japan, and she spent extended time as a child and a young adult in Hawai’i visiting her grandmother. Islands are personal for the artist. Rich and varied landscapes inform her work, as does overlapping notions of place. From these national and international boundaries to her own backyard where plentiful plants multiply in the abundant humidity of Miami, the artist draws inspiration from complex textures, sumptuous colors, and intricated details.
The exhibition will be on view at MDC’s Hialeah Campus from January 20 through March 7, 2026. Additional public programs and events accompanying the exhibition will be announced on MOAD’s website and social media channels.
MOAD’s programs are made possible with the support of the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs and the Cultural Affairs Council, the Miami-Dade County Mayor, and the Board of County Commissioners. They are sponsored in part by the State of Florida through the Department of State through the Division of Arts and Culture, and with generous support from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
WHAT: Cristina Lei Rodriguez: Baroque Islands
WHEN: Tuesday, January 20 through Saturday, March 7, 2026
WHERE: MDC’s Hialeah Campus Art Gallery, 1780 West 49th Street, Hialeah, FL 33012
For updates and a full schedule of MOAD’s events, please visit http://www.moadmdc.org/ and check our Facebook and Instagram channels for regular updates.
Press Contacts: Jennifer Weinberg, MOAD Marketing and Membership Manager, 305-237-7710, jweinbe1@mdc.edu.
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