FIU’s Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum opens Ofelia Rodríguez: Psychic Jungle on Saturday, November 14, 2026, with a free opening night. The museum calls it the first major solo exhibition in the United States for the Barranquilla-born artist, who died in 2023 after building her career in Bogotá, Paris and London.
Key Takeaways
- Ofelia Rodríguez: Psychic Jungle runs November 14, 2026, through July 25, 2027, at the Frost Art Museum on FIU’s Modesto A. Maidique Campus.
- A free Fall Season Opening on November 14 includes a members and VIP preview from 6 to 7 p.m. and a public reception from 7 to 9 p.m. with live cumbia by Cumbiamba.
- Admission to the Frost Art Museum is free, and the museum is open Tuesday through Sunday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.
- Rodríguez (1946–2023) began making her signature “magic boxes” in Paris in the late 1970s and settled in London in 1984.
- Her first major survey, at Spike Island in Bristol, England, opened in September 2023, weeks after her death.
A Free Opening Night With Cumbia on November 14
The Frost Art Museum marks the arrival of Psychic Jungle with a free Fall Season Opening on Saturday, November 14. Members and VIP guests get a first look from 6 to 7 p.m., and the public reception follows from 7 to 9 p.m., with a cumbia party led by Miami-based ensemble Cumbiamba. The evening also opens What Takes Root, which launches the museum’s Green Family Collection of work by artists connected to South Florida.
For a city that hosts a steady flow of international art, the occasion carries weight. The museum describes the exhibition as the first major U.S. solo show of the late Colombian artist, and it arrives the same week as Sheroanawe Hakihiiwe’s first U.S. museum solo show at ICA Miami, another Latin American artist reaching American audiences through a Miami museum.
Ofelia Rodríguez Started in Barranquilla, Bogotá and Yale
Ofelia Rodríguez was born in Barranquilla, on Colombia’s Caribbean coast, and memories of that city shaped her work for the rest of her life. She studied at the Escuela de Bellas Artes at the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, then studied painting at Yale University in the early 1970s.
Her mature work drew on the colors, tropical motifs and local myths of the Caribbean coast, often with humor and a critical edge about cultural identity and gender stereotypes. Visitors to Psychic Jungle will find recurring images of sacred hearts, hybrid bodies, toys and bandaged mountains, along with works such as Peligro de Muerte (Danger of Death), a 1998 mixed media painting on canvas lent by the artist’s estate and Instituto de Visión.
Paris Gave Ofelia Rodríguez Her Signature Magic Boxes
In the late 1970s, Rodríguez moved to Paris to study etching at Atelier 17. There she began arranging found objects in what she called “magic boxes,” small wooden boxes with doors, painted in bright colors and holding objects the way a shrine holds a relic.
The objects came from her own collecting. Rodríguez gathered masks, devotional images, horns and plastic toys from street markets in Colombia and Mexico, then combined them into compositions that read as both playful and strange. The boxes became a format she returned to throughout her career, sometimes as standalone sculptures and sometimes fixed directly onto her canvases. Psychic Jungle presents them alongside her paintings, drawings, prints and assemblages.
London Became Ofelia Rodríguez’s Home From 1984
Rodríguez settled in London in 1984 and worked from an East London studio for the rest of her life. Her work traveled widely in those years, including a 1988 exhibition at the Queens Museum of Art in New York, and it entered collections such as ESCALA, the Essex Collection of Art from Latin America at the University of Essex, and the Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach, California.
Large-scale recognition came late. Spike Island, the art center in Bristol, England, announced her death in late August 2023, and its survey Talking in Dreams opened weeks later, running from September 30, 2023, to January 14, 2024. Psychic Jungle carries that reassessment across the Atlantic three years later.
The Frost Art Museum Brings the Show to FIU’s Campus
The Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum, a Smithsonian Affiliate, organized Psychic Jungle and offers free admission to all of its galleries. Hosting the exhibition on a public university campus places Rodríguez’s work in front of students and faculty as well as the general public, part of an FIU arts calendar that also includes FIU’s Wertheim Performing Arts Center, which marks 30 years this season.
Planning a Visit to Psychic Jungle
The Frost Art Museum is at 10975 SW 17th Street in Miami and is open Tuesday through Sunday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Psychic Jungle stays on view through July 25, 2027, while What Takes Root closes April 11, 2027. During Miami Art Week, the museum hosts its annual Breakfast in the Park on Sunday, December 6.
Visitors building a fall museum circuit can pair the Frost with the Berggruen collection show at Pérez Art Museum Miami, which runs through February 2027.
FAQs
When Does Ofelia Rodríguez: Psychic Jungle Open at the Frost Art Museum?
The exhibition opens Saturday, November 14, 2026, and runs through July 25, 2027. A free public reception takes place on opening night from 7 to 9 p.m.
Is the Frost Art Museum Free?
Yes. Admission to the Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum at FIU is free. The museum is open Tuesday through Sunday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Who Was Ofelia Rodríguez?
Ofelia Rodríguez (1946–2023) was a Colombian artist born in Barranquilla who studied in Bogotá, at Yale and at Atelier 17 in Paris before settling in London in 1984. She is known for her “magic boxes,” painted wooden boxes filled with found objects.
What Are Ofelia Rodríguez’s Magic Boxes?
The magic boxes are small, brightly painted wooden boxes with doors that Rodríguez filled with found objects such as masks, devotional images, horns and plastic toys. She began making them in Paris in the late 1970s.
