Click here for exhibition Gallery Notes. Click HERE for photos from Opening NIght!

Celebrating its 15th anniversary in 2025, Locust Art Builders: Summer Art Intensive for Teens, aka LAB, is a unique five-week pre-college program for high school students with an interest in art, design, and exploring creative careers. Students are selected through an online open call process from schools across Miami-Dade County for the opportunity to learn from Lead Artist Mentors and other professional artists in a dynamic on-site program and build an art exhibition from scratch in Miami’s longest running alternative art space. Each year’s exhibition evolves as a unique and timely reflection of the current issues and ideas impacting youth today. This year’s exhibition is titled Hypervigilance.

STUDENT ARTISTS’ STATEMENT
Hypervigilance is an exhibition we created to explore what it feels like to grow up in a world where we’re always being watched. From school hallways to social media, surveillance shows up in both obvious and subtle ways—through cameras, algorithms, judgment, and expectations. For us, Hypervigilance is about the constant pressure to be seen, to perform, and to conform.

We asked ourselves: When does watching become controlling? Who gets to watch, and who is being watched? This installation comes from our own stories, our daily experiences, and the unsettling feeling of never truly being alone—even in our own thoughts. We used collage, sound, and sculpture to express how surveillance shapes our identities, our behaviors, and our sense of freedom.

Hypervigilance frames surveillance as an umbrella term, one that encompasses religion, judgment, censorship, and technology. It’s the feeling that someone is always evaluating what we do or say. We wanted to explore how that kind of constant observation changes the way we move, speak, and think about ourselves.

Through this project, we reclaimed part of that gaze—turning it into something we could shape, challenge, and share on our own terms.

THE ARTISTS
Arianna Alarcon, Rodrigo Barrera, Mikaela Burgos, Vincent Collada, Olivia Collada, Sofia Dinamarca Toro, Daniela Gonzalez, Mia Hagymasi, Mia Kakalik, Olivia Lazo, Emely Melendez Yanji, Madison Schafer, Katherine Sosa, and Diana Zelayandia.

LAB INTERNS
Julian Henriquez and Ric Mondragon (Miami Arts Charter)

SCHOOLS REPRESENTED
Miami Senior High School, Coral Gables Senior High, Design and Architecture Senior High, Palmer Trinity School, Terra Environmental Research Institute, New World School of the Arts, and Miami Arts Charter School

This year’s LAB is led by an ensemble of Mentor Artists, including: longtime LAB Lead Mentors, Loni Johnson and Chire Reagans; Rodolfo Peraza (MUD Foundation), Eric Hupe (Zuexis VR), and Cynthia Cruz, who provided hands-on workshops and digital curriculum; organizational and coordination support from artist and curator Melissa Wallen; and technical support from Miami Design Shop, in addition to Locust Projects team members, including past LAB student and intern, Dani Pearson.

Locust Art Builders: Summer Art Intensive for Teens 2025 is made possible through lead support from: the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs and the Cultural Affairs Council, The Miami-Dade County Mayor Board and County Commissioners, The Children’s Trust; Susan & Richard Arregui; Diane & Werner Grob; The Kirk Foundation; and the INCUBATORS Friends of the Next Generation.

Additional technical support provided by Miami Design Shop.