Locust Projects presents Lost Shaker of Salt, a newly commissioned installation by artists Patty Gone and Kelly Breez. Transforming the mythology of Margaritaville into a queer, anti-colonial shrine, the artists ask: who gets to inhabit the fantasy of paradise–and who built it? A towering flip-flop greets visitors at the entrance, a monumental pair of cargo shorts houses a reading room, and a twelve-foot spilled margarita becomes an altar to Jimmy Buffett.

The exhibition dismantles the narrow dream of the “good life” sold by Margaritaville–a world of endless sunsets, tropical leisure, and carefree retirement–by exposing the social and historical contradictions beneath its cheerful imagery. Through humor and camp spectacle, Lost Shaker of Salt poses a pointed question: who gets to live in paradise, and who is left outside its gates?

Visitors who enter through the fly of the cargo shorts, will encounter the “James William Buffett Anticolonialist Memorial Library,” a collection of books examining the impacts of tourism and colonization across Latin America–forces that continue to shape Miami’s identity as a gateway to the tropics.

Across the gallery walls, a panoramic sunset projection–Margaritaville’s iconic backdrop–features video performances with Miami-based LGBTQ artists, situating fantasy alongside the city’s lived realities. These dreamlike interventions retell the history of the margarita while restoring queer eccentricity to a cultural narrative of paradise often framed as harmless escapism.

“Margaritaville sells Caribbean beaches as a lifestyle brand,” the artists, Breez and Gone, note. “We wanted to treat it like a religion—and ask what people are really worshipping.” 

With sand, salt, and a camp sensibility, the exhibition restores grit and bacchanalian possibility to a rotting lime long past its prime.

The exhibition is a Knight Digital Commission.

Locust Projects 25-26 season of exhibitions are supported, in part, with major support from:  The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation; The Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs and the Cultural Affairs Council, the Miami-Dade County Mayor and Board of County Commissioners; and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.