The Frank C. Ortis Art Gallery in Pembroke Pines opened “Hyphenated Encounters” on September 17, a two-part exhibition that organizers describe as the most comprehensive survey of Cuban American painter Lilian Garcia-Roig’s work ever presented. The show spans more than three decades of Garcia-Roig’s career, pairing historical landscape paintings with newer site-responsive pieces and a short film, and runs through January 17, 2027. A second exhibition, “Discord and Serenity,” opened the same evening in the gallery’s adjacent space. Both shows are free to attend, consistent with The Frank’s policy of offering all exhibitions at no cost to the public.
Key Takeaways
- “Hyphenated Encounters” is a collaborative presentation between The Frank C. Ortis Art Gallery and Miami-Dade County’s Deering Estate, running September 17, 2026, through January 17, 2027
- The exhibition spans more than 30 years of Garcia-Roig’s career and is described as the most comprehensive presentation of the artist’s work to date
- Garcia-Roig is a 2021 Guggenheim Fellow, a Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor at Florida State University, and a recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation Award in Painting
- “Discord and Serenity,” curated by RemiJin Camping, features works by Barry University MFA students Joy Johnson and Bruna Marcon Weber
- Both exhibitions are free and open to the public at 601 City Center Way in Pembroke Pines
Two Curatorial Voices Shape a Single Retrospective
“Hyphenated Encounters” is not a single exhibition in the traditional sense. The show is a collaboration between two curatorial programs that have been developing independently and are now presented together under one roof. “Lilian Garcia-Roig: A Practice of Place,” curated by The Frank’s Chief Curator Sophie Bonet, anchors the retrospective with a career-spanning survey of Garcia-Roig’s paintings, tracing the evolution of the artist’s engagement with landscape, perception, and the physical act of painting outdoors. The companion component, “Deering Estate Residency: Lilian Garcia-Roig, Site, and the Labor of Belonging,” curated by Deering Estate Head Curator Liliam Dominguez, brings work produced during Garcia-Roig’s residency at the Deering Estate, a 444-acre environmental and archaeological preserve in South Miami-Dade County.
The dual-curated structure reflects how Garcia-Roig’s practice operates across institutional and geographic boundaries. Bonet’s curation establishes the arc of the artist’s career and methodology, while Dominguez’s curation grounds a portion of that arc in a specific South Florida site. Together, the two sections allow audiences to see both the breadth of Garcia-Roig’s output over three decades and the concentrated intensity of work produced when that practice is directed at a particular landscape.
The pairing is not new ground for The Frank and Deering Estate. The two institutions have collaborated on previous exhibitions, including the 2025 “Of Seeing and Being” show featuring Deering Estate artists-in-residence Giannina Dwin and Tony Fernandez. That ongoing partnership has created a pipeline between Miami-Dade County’s environmental and cultural institutions and the Pembroke Pines gallery, positioning The Frank as a venue where Miami-Dade’s residency programs reach audiences in western Broward County who might not otherwise encounter the work.
Garcia-Roig’s Practice Embeds Cuban Identity Into the Physical Material of Painting
Lilian Garcia-Roig was born in Havana, Cuba, in 1966, raised in Houston, Texas, and has lived in Tallahassee, Florida, for more than two decades, where she serves as a professor in the Department of Art at Florida State University. The artist is known for large-scale plein air paintings produced through an intense wet-on-wet technique applied over the course of a single day. The resulting canvases capture densely forested landscapes in layers of saturated color that compress hours of shifting light, wind, and atmosphere into a single surface.
The connection to Cuba in Garcia-Roig’s work is not solely thematic. Florida State University has noted that the artist has occasionally incorporated raw, handmade Cuban soil pigments into her paintings, physically embedding the material of the island into the work itself. That gesture ties the paintings to a specific geography even when the depicted landscape may be a Florida forest or an Appalachian hillside. For Garcia-Roig, the question of where a painting happens and what the paint is made of are not separate from the question of identity. The “hyphenated” in the exhibition’s title refers to this condition directly: the experience of holding two places, two cultures, and two sets of visual memory in a single practice.
Garcia-Roig’s family connection to Cuba extends into scientific history. Her great-uncle, Juan Tomas Roig, was a renowned Cuban botanist who spent his career cataloging and collecting Cuban plants. The overlap between her great-uncle’s botanical work and her own visual investigation of landscape and vegetation has become an explicit thread in recent projects, including the series “Hyphenating Natures by Recollecting Roig,” which explores the intersection between art, science, and inherited knowledge across generations.
Credentials That Place the Retrospective in National Context
The scope of “Hyphenated Encounters” reflects an artist whose institutional recognition has accelerated in recent years. In 2021, Garcia-Roig was named a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellow in Fine Arts, a distinction that provided support for her ongoing exploration of the Cuban landscape and its relationship to her identity as a Cuban American artist working in the United States. In 2023, Florida State University awarded Garcia-Roig the Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professorship, the university’s highest faculty honor.
Garcia-Roig’s exhibition history includes solo presentations at the Americas Society Gallery in New York, the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C., and the Art Museum of the Americas. Her list of awards includes the Joan Mitchell Foundation Award in Painting, a MacDowell Colony Fellowship, the Kimbrough Award for outstanding Texas artist under 30, and residencies at the Vermont Studio Center and the Joan Mitchell Center in New Orleans. The artist has held visiting positions at UC Berkeley and the Ludwig Foundation of Cuba in Havana, where she began developing the Cuban American identity work that has become central to her practice.
For South Florida audiences, the retrospective provides access to a body of work that has circulated primarily through university galleries, residency exhibitions, and national institutions. Presenting more than 30 years of that output in Pembroke Pines, free of charge, represents a curatorial decision to bring the work to a community audience rather than waiting for the community to find it in institutional settings elsewhere.
“Discord and Serenity” Brings Emerging Artists Into the Same Opening
The second exhibition opening on September 17 occupies a different register. “Discord and Serenity,” curated by RemiJin Camping, features works by Joy Johnson and Bruna Marcon Weber, both MFA students at Barry University. Where “Hyphenated Encounters” presents a career built over three decades, “Discord and Serenity” captures two artists in the process of developing their voices within an academic program.
The pairing of an established artist retrospective with an emerging artist show reflects The Frank’s programming model. The gallery has consistently scheduled its exhibition openings in pairs or sets, using opening reception nights to give visitors access to multiple exhibitions in a single visit. The format creates a contrast that benefits both shows: the retrospective provides historical depth and institutional weight, while the emerging artist exhibition brings the energy of work being made now, before the careers attached to it have settled into a fixed trajectory.
The September 17 opening reception ran from 6 to 9 PM and included artist meet-and-greets, light refreshments, and access to both exhibitions. The gallery, located at 601 City Center Way in the Charles F. Dodge City Center, is open Tuesday through Saturday from 11 AM to 5 PM. Admission remains free for all exhibitions throughout their runs.
What “Hyphenated Encounters” Represents for South Florida’s Art Calendar
The timing of “Hyphenated Encounters” places it at the front end of South Florida’s fall and winter art season, a stretch that builds toward Art Basel Miami Beach in December and draws increasing institutional and collector attention to the region’s galleries starting in September and October. For The Frank, which operates as a municipal gallery funded by the City of Pembroke Pines rather than through private donations or admission revenue, the exhibition represents a statement about what a publicly funded space in western Broward County can achieve in terms of curatorial ambition.
The gallery was dedicated in April 2017 and named for former Pembroke Pines Mayor Frank C. Ortis in recognition of his advocacy for cultural programming in the city. Under Chief Curator Sophie Bonet’s direction, The Frank has built a reputation for mounting exhibitions that engage with immigration, identity, diaspora, and the relationship between landscape and belonging. Past exhibitions including “On the Samara’s Wing,” which focused on artists exploring transnational identity through botany and organic materials, and “Adventum Floridana,” which examined South Florida landscapes in transition, have established a curatorial throughline that “Hyphenated Encounters” extends.
Garcia-Roig’s retrospective, anchored by the Deering Estate collaboration and running through mid-January, gives The Frank its longest and most comprehensive single-artist presentation to date. For Miami-Dade and Broward residents who follow the region’s art scene, the show offers a reason to visit Pembroke Pines before the December Art Basel crowds descend on Miami Beach, Wynwood, and the Design District.
FAQs
Where Is the “Hyphenated Encounters” Exhibition Located?
The exhibition is at the Frank C. Ortis Art Gallery, located at 601 City Center Way in the Charles F. Dodge City Center in Pembroke Pines, Florida. The gallery is open Tuesday through Saturday from 11 AM to 5 PM, and admission is free.
How Long Does the Exhibition Run?
“Hyphenated Encounters” opened on September 17, 2026, and runs through January 17, 2027. “Discord and Serenity” opened on the same date; its closing date should be confirmed directly with the gallery.
Who Is Lilian Garcia-Roig?
Lilian Garcia-Roig is a Cuban American painter born in Havana in 1966, raised in Houston, and currently based in Tallahassee, Florida. She is a professor at Florida State University, a 2021 Guggenheim Fellow, and the recipient of FSU’s Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professorship, the university’s highest faculty honor. Garcia-Roig is known for large-scale plein air landscape paintings produced through an intensive wet-on-wet technique.
Is the Exhibition Free?
All exhibitions at the Frank C. Ortis Art Gallery are free and open to the public. No tickets, appointments, or registration are required.
