Remembering South Florida Artist and Activist Alessandra Mondolfi

Miami's creative community continues to mourn the loss of artist and activist Alessandra Mondolfi, who died by suicide at the age of 55 in January after a battle with long COVID. Mondolfi was best known around South Florida for her protest art, which included posters and wearable pieces with in-your-face political messaging. In 2018, some of those works were prominently featured in HistoryMiami's "Avenues of Expression" exhibition, which highlighted the street art Miamians encounter in daily life.

Much of the work highlighted in that exhibition protested the presidency of Donald Trump — Mondolfi was a frequent New Times fixture during his first presidential term. Just a few months after his first inauguration, she organized creatively minded anti-Trump marches across South Florida and other U.S. cities with the help of the Artful Activist, a progressive art collective I founded in response to Trump's first election. Among the works she created for the Artist March were large "Resist" letters composed of American flags that could be seen with drones or by plane.

Later that year, during Art Basel, I marched alongside her during the Parade Against Patriarchy outside the Bass Museum on Miami Beach. Many of the protestors held her signs up high during the procession.

Mondolfi was born in Rochester, New York, and lived in Caracas, Venezuela, for most of her childhood. After graduating from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in 1996, she remained in Boston, where she took on different roles, including as a technical instructor for MIT and a fabricator and designer for theater props, sets, and costumes. She was also a multi-disciplinary artist and received multiple grants and awards, most notably a Fulbright grant to Barcelona in 1996.

She moved to Miami in 2016, where her practice shifted towards activism in response to the political climate. Drawing from her theater experience, her Props for Protest were deployed in hundreds of local and national actions by teams wearing all black, garnering a significant amount of media coverage.

Mondolfi put her body on the line, too. In 2019, El Paso police put out an arrest warrant for her after she and other activists protested inside the Border Patrol Museum. A few months later, she was detained by Department of Homeland Security officers outside the Homestead child migrant camp she visited almost daily for six months with Witness at the Border.
She produced numerous props and light projections using the phrase "Homes Instead" and made large, red hearts to wave at children inside the facility, many of whom spoke only Indigenous languages and dialects. She and other activists stood on ladders to ensure the children saw the signs over a fence. Local and national politicians — including Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava and most of the Democratic presidential candidates of the day — visited the site and held the heart signs, prompting national news coverage. That year, Mondolfi received the Maurice Rosen Act of Courage Award from the ACLU of Florida and the Virtuosic Artful Activism Award by Backbone Campaign. The Homestead detention facility was later investigated and shut down.

Activist Tina Marie Davidson of Witness at the Border recalls what motivated Mondolfi: "She cared deeply about injustices. When Alessandra looked, she was unable to look away. This led her to act on issues she held dear, including the environment, immigration, our democracy, women's rights, LGTBQ rights, civil rights, and more. Her banners, signs, light projections, videos, wheatpasting, and protest jewelry brought life to our causes....I know that the light she shined on injustices led to meaningful change."

Curator Lisa Rockford, who exhibited Mondolfi’s sculptures at Art Fort Lauderdale and Baily Contemporary Arts in Pompano Beach, says, "I was lucky to see her exhibition of Resist flags at FATVillage and am proud to have marched side-by-side with her at Mar-a-Lago in 2018."

"She could use her hands to make anything — absolutely anything," adds her sister Ruth Mondolfi. "Simply put, she was a marvel."

If you are in crisis, please call, text, or chat with the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988, or contact the Crisis Text Line by texting TALK to 741741.