MILAGROS : Flutter ZoneMILAGROS
MOCA Jacksonville’S Project Atrium
Edited by Amber Sesnick Director of Communications & Marketing at MOCA Jacksonville
Photos by Laura Evans
The most recent installation in the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) Jacksonville’s Project Atrium series was created by MILAGROS. Cofounded by Florida artists Felici Asteinza and Joey Fillastre, MILAGROS creates site-specific works that are interactive, multi media, and immersive. The artists spent just over a week in Jacksonville installing “Flutter Zone,” a work that fills the Atrium space with more than 9,000 square feet of fabric, adorable creatures, music, and movement—all of which fit into the back of their Prius. While onsite at MOCA, the artists sat for an interview with Senior Curator Ylva Rouse so we could learn more about their artistic process and their inspiration for “Flutter Zone.”
Ylva Rouse: What is MILAGROS? Please talk about your goals as artists and how collaborating with others is important to your way of working.
Felici Asteinza: We’re originally from Florida, but we currently work out of New Orleans and spend a lot of time between there and Miami. People know us for our murals and installations.
Joey Fillastre: We’re primarily a painting duo, but we collaborate with a lot of other people, depending on what projects we’re doing or what we’re trying to accomplish. We’re primarily focused on painting and mark making, and that leads us into installation. We are interested in transforming spaces and creating environments for free expression and a feeling of safety and comfort.
FA: Collaboration is central to what we do. We collaborate with each other daily, but we also do work with a lot of other people and have found you can do so much more when you’re working together than when you are by yourself. We inspire each other when we work with these different artists. It’s cool to have a system set up so people can excel and succeed, doing the things they are good at, and we can bolster each other up.
JF: I like collaborating with people that are ambitious about what they do. Inevitably, we learn a lot from them, and we get to teach a lot to other people. Working with somebody else that’s equally inspired or just as passionate about what they do pushes everything forward a lot more than when we work individually.
