The Passage, 2021
200 Miracle Mile + 257 Miracle Mile

Joseph Clayton Mills

In storefront windows along Miracle Mile, ghostly figures shift, dance, and blur; as they come together and fly apart, faces from the past overlap with the reflections of people and traffic passing by. In The Passage, Joseph Clayton Mills alters and interweaves archival footage from Coral Gables and the surrounding South Florida communities—parades, political protests, and pedestrians going about their daily lives—which is then projected through an array of rotating mirrors, creating a kaleidoscope of overlapping images. Past and present are superimposed, and individuals emerge from and disappear into the passing crowds. Together, these shifting images evoke the complex, dynamic ways in which memory and history dissolve into one another to form an evolving present, as the life of a community emerges from the individual journeys of those who have come before. The Passage invites its audience to reflect on their continuity with that past, contemplate the relationship between the personal and the communal, and interrogate the shared spaces, rituals, memories, and paths that bring them together.