A vacant retail space at the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport (FLL) has been transformed into a gallery where hurried travelers and anyone traversing the airport can take a break and enjoy public art.
The Broward Cultural Division and the Broward County Aviation Department partnered to create more opportunities for visitors to experience art in a place not usually associated with artistic expression.
In January 2023, professional South Florida artists were invited to apply for a chance to create an art exhibit to be displayed on a six-month rotating schedule in the new gallery space. Located post-security in FLL’s Terminal 1, Concourse C, the 24-foot-by-12-foot space has been designated as a temporary gallery for two years. One of the pre-requisites for the artists exhibiting is that they utilize the entirety of the space and transform it into an immersive and experiential art installation in an effort for airport visitors to engage with the art.
The first exhibition was installed in July 2023 and a second exhibit in January 2024. The latest exhibition, which opened on Aug. 2, is titled “The Transition” by digital media artist and interactive multimedia designer Parinaz Moghadampour, aka PARMO. She created her newest piece using the visual development platform, TouchDesigner, a programming software used to generate and render high resolution two dimensional and three-dimensional video and animation content for performances and art installations, she explains.
Using this program, the artist digitally rendered an abstract animated design that is projected onto translucent cloths suspended from the ceiling. These designs integrate four different patterns – Shamsa, Mocárabe, Muqarnas, and Orosi – which are a nod to the artist’s Persian background. They symbolize the sun, warmth, vitality, harmony and beauty.
“Being from Iran, I was brought up seeing ancient buildings with elaborate architectural elements, and floors covered in intricately designed Persian carpets. These images are something that is still a part of me today and why I wanted to include them in my art,” says Moghadampour.
When creating “The Transition,” Moghadampour specifically chose to feature elements reminiscent of 15th-century Safavid architecture’s geometric and mathematical designs to create visuals that “transition” into one another. “I called it ‘The Transition’ because these designs can easily morph into each other because of their many similarities and things in common because they all follow the same mathematical and geometrical logic,” she says.
Before becoming an artist, Moghadampour studied mathematics in high school before pursuing her Bachelor of Arts in Cinematography and Editing from the University of Tehran which is also evident in her artistic style. “I’m not a sculptor or a painter so when I started creating my art, I had to go about finding a different way to translate these designs and themes using what I know. So, what I’ve done is found a generative way of recreating them through different mediums like video and live rendering,” says Moghadampour.
“The Transition” is usually displayed using live rendering which involves Moghadampour creating the transitions between images in real-time using a MIDI controller, a type of input device used to send digitally encoded information to a computer, she explains. The artist had to modify how the art was displayed in the T1C Gallery because the gallery space is not monitored, so she ended up pre-recording one of the live renderings that works on a constant loop.
“My main purpose of putting these types of visuals in this space was to hopefully alleviate people’s stress. When people are getting back from or going on a trip, they might be stressed or tired so this felt like a very good chance to offer them a space where they can chill,” she says. Travelers have already been sitting on the floor in the space doing exactly that, she says.
Before creating “The Transition,” Moghadampour’s designed numerous other interactive installations using her expertise in coding, 3D animation, and motion design while pursuing her Master of Fine Arts in Graphic Design at Florida Atlantic University. But when designing this piece, she used the opportunity to blend both parts of her life into one installation. “I wanted to overlap two different types of designs together, a combination of something very practical and simple with something very ancient and ornate,” she says.
Moghadampour’s exhibit will be on display through mid-January 2025.
Following her exhibit’s closure, a newly selected artist will be given the chance to transform the space yet again sometime in January 2025.
IF YOU GO
WHAT: ““The Transition” T1C Gallery Exhibit
WHERE: Terminal 1, Concourse C, Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, 100 Terminal Dr., Fort Lauderdale
WHEN: Through January 2025
TICKETS: Free (only accessible to Terminal 1 passengers with a valid boarding pass to go beyond the security checkpoint area)
INFORMATION: https://www.broward.org/Arts/PublicArt/Pages/FLL.aspx
