Big Birds: Outsize Palm Beach Public Art Installation Urges Us to Think Outside the Ballot Box

With Election Day mere days away, a unique art installation featuring voting booths and enormous flamingos is causing Floridians to look way, way up in West Palm Beach.

Outside the Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections headquarters on Cherry Road — less than five miles from former president Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence as the flamingo flies — artist Matthew Mazzotta has created VOTE! an attention-grabbing installation and a reminder of the significance of voting.

Commissioned by Palm Beach County, the quirky work is impossible to miss: four larger-than-life voting booths, three of which are dwarfed by an occupant in the form of a towering, 27-foot flamingo stepping up to cast its ballot.

But while the sight of pink flamingos engaging in what might be Florida's most human civic duty is undeniably whimsical, Mazzotta's artwork bears a powerful underlying message. The installation asks us to consider the ripple effects of our voting decisions, not only for our fellow citizens but for our nonhuman neighbors and our impact on the habitat we all share.

One bird appears deep in thought, its head tucked down as if contemplating the weight of its choice, while the other two flamingos appear to be looking at one another, perhaps with a touch of the side-eye — details that tease out the individualistic yet interconnected nature of voting, wherein each ballot adds a unique voice to the collective.

The artist, known for blending activism with public art, is known for creating public installations around the world — including The Storefront Theater in a small Nebraska town, Wrapped in Sunbeams at a Los Angeles rehabilitation center, and Steeped in Exploration ("A Teahouse Without Tea!") in the Netherlands — each one blending art with a message of community awareness that pushes viewers to see beyond the obvious and recognize the broader impact of human choices on their surroundings.

"Public space is the most potent place to discuss these issues because it contains the richest diversity of perspectives. And that's what makes it so powerful," Mazzotta explained in a TED Talk in which he shared his expertise and insights. Mazzotta, who grew up near the Canadian border in New York and earned a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a master's degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Program in Art, expanded on his aims with VOTE! in a recent conversation with New Times.

"VOTE! does two important things," he says. "One, it shows what's happening inside the building, and it also humanizes the experience of voting by showing that each person — or in this case, each flamingo — is an individual that votes their own heart. And you can see that each of the individual flamingos has a different personality.

"The second part, though, is that the flamingos of VOTE! represent all the people and the beings that can't vote but are affected by those who can vote. So each one of us votes, but our votes obviously affect more than just us, so this can extend up to people in other countries or to plants, animals, ecosystems all around the world."

That said, universalism only goes so far. An artist who creates works for communities around the world must be able to synthesize the uniqueness of each place.

"I don't do works that are just one-size-fits-all," Mazzotta says. "I always try to dial it into that community."
In looking to dial it in for Palm Beach County, he turned to a creature he'd sought inspiration from not long ago, albeit in a different context. In 2021, he created HOME, a commission that quickly became an iconic image at Tampa International Airport.

"So I just thought about these flamingos. They are native birds. They live here with us. However, they're not at the voting box.

"We're interconnected at the end of the day," he elaborates. "And the voting process exposes that. It privileges some, and so we have to honor that privilege we have when we vote."