The ReefLine Will Create a Coral Reef Out of Sunken Art

Miami's art scene is about to take a dive thanks to a new project taking art beneath the ocean waves.

Describing itself as an "underwater sculpture park," the ReefLine aims to blend art with ocean conservation, building a new "hybrid reef" just 600 feet off the coast of Miami Beach. It has recruited some all-star artists to contribute to the project, designing sculptures that will be deliberately sunk to build a brand-new oceanic environment. One of those installations, Carlos Betancourt's Miami Reef Star, will be displayed on the beach during Miami Art Week starting Tuesday, December 3. Others involved in the project include Argentine artist Leandro Ehrlich, the subject of a retrospective at the Pérez Art Museum Miami in 2022, and Shohei Shigematsu of the architecture firm OMA.

On the face, it seems like a perfect idea to stimulate tourism further. Some people come to Miami for art, others to enjoy the subtropical ecosystem through snorkeling and scuba diving — at the ReefLine, you can do both simultaneously. That may be part of the reason the project has received institutional support, including a Knight Foundation Arts Challenge Award in 2019 and $5 million in public funds from the City of Miami Beach. But there's more to it than that. Project founder Ximenia Caminos says the project is meant to repair the damage already done to Miami's marine ecosystem after a 2002 sand replenishment project smothered coral reefs.

"The ReefLine is not a coral restoration project," says Caminos, whose résumé includes a decade as artistic director at the Faena Group and designing the cultural master plan for the Underline. "What we're going to do is we're going to help coastal resiliency. We're going to become public housing for fish. There will be a coral resiliency testing site. Right now, we're breeding 2,200 corals, and we're seeking a permit for them to be installed in some of our sculptures with coral locks, which is a technology that helps expedite coral planting. So it's a beautiful hybrid of heart and science."
That hybrid approach is reflected in Betancourt's work, which will be installed as part of the project's second phase; the first, Ehrlich's cast-concrete sculpture of a traffic jam entitled Concrete Coral, is set to be installed in 2025. Each star-shaped precast sculpture in Miami Reef Star will be arranged in the shape of a star, which will be visible from high above to airplane passengers flying in and out of Miami. Betancourt and architect Alberto Latorre worked with scientists from the University of Miami to ensure Reef Star would attract and stimulate biological growth. For instance, the artist made sure certain holes in the sculptures were big enough for sea turtles to swim through. They also consulted with structural engineers to ensure the concrete would withstand strong tidal forces.

"We became very informed about how coral and other marine life grows in the natural reef," Betancourt says. "They have advanced research on how to re-create the environments in an artificial reef. The technology exists, the science exists, the marine biology exists, and there are actually several landscape fields underwater that grow coral. So, what we had to do was select a specific texture in our star elements where this marine life takes hold. That's one way we have to stimulate growth; another was through perforations in the structural elements."

The ReefLine also hopes to use what Caminos refers to as "climate technology" to take a more environmentally conscious approach to materials. Artificial reefs are often made of discarded bits of manmade structures such as sunken ships and industrial debris, and past projects have also utilized materials such as plastic and rubber tires that can be harmful to marine life. For the ReefLine, low-emissions carbon has been selected instead. It's also working with various universities to develop materials that can act as carbon sinks.
"We're working with materials that are much more eco-friendly because they use more geopolymers and around 60 percent less concrete," Caminos says.

Ambitious art projects are nothing new to Betancourt. In 1983, he volunteered on Christo and Jeanne-Claude's legendary Surrounded Islands, which wrapped the islands in Biscayne Bay in pink fabric for nearly two weeks. He describes the experience as "one of the engines of my artwork because, at a very young age, I learned that art could exist outside the white cube gallery and the museum establishment." After Caminos approached him about designing something for the ReefLine, he and LaTorre thought carefully about what they could contribute before approaching her with the Reef Star.

"We felt very strongly about this project. I remember telling Alberto, 'I think this project wants to exist.' There's a force behind this." he says. "It almost feels like we don't own the project, like we're developing a very symbiotic relationship between curator, the ocean, the cosmos, and the corals."

Miami Reef Star. On view Tuesday, December 3, through Sunday, December 8, at Miami Beach between 36th and 37th streets; thereefline.org.