The Smell of Banana Flowers

By Priscilla Aleman

Dates:
November 2026 – November 2027

Time: 
9:00 a.m. – 4:30 p.m. (last entrance at 3:00 p.m.)

Location: 
The Kampong (4013 South Douglas Road, Miami FL 33133)

The Smell of Banana Flowers is a multidisciplinary project by Priscilla Aleman that activates public space through free, site-responsive programs at The Kampong. Blending sculpture, performance, and film, the project invites audiences into an immersive environment that explores Afro-Caribbean mythologies, plant knowledge, and environmental stewardship through community-centered dialogue and engagement.

Rooted in the legacy of the artist’s grandfather, a Cuban horticulturist at heart, the project reimagines the tropics not only as an ecological force but as a metaphysical conduit capable of transmitting memory, intuition, and transformation across generations. Inspired by his life and by David Fairchild’s explorations shaped by tropical cultivation, the artist’s practice unfolds as a bio-mythology: a living narrative informed by ancestral memory, plant knowledge, and states of transformation.

Drawing on a background in archaeology, the artist uses performance and sculpture to retrace ideas surrounding the afterlife, Pre-Columbian cosmology, and the interplay of cultures across the Global South. Positioning the tropics as a connective tissue linking histories, ecologies, and cultural traditions, the work incorporates materials gathered from related regions throughout the Americas and the Caribbean alongside extensive field research to recontextualize relationships between old and new worlds.