Amalia Pica: Lecturas Posibles

Visitors can draw and write across the walls, furniture and objects of an interactive library installation by Amalia Pica at The Bass in Miami Beach. On view September 17, 2026 through February 12, 2027, Lecturas Posibles transforms The Rotunda into a nearly two-dimensional environment covered in chalkboard paint and white hand-drawn outlines. Colored chalk allows each participant to alter the space and contribute to its evolving imagery. The installation responds to the site’s history. The Bass building originally opened in the 1930s as the Miami Beach Public Library and Art Center, while The Rotunda later served as a gathering space for a new library built in Collins Park. Pica reimagines that setting as a communal reading room with bookshelves, desks, seating areas and repurposed objects. Books within the installation are sealed shut, shifting attention from fixed texts to the stories and associations created by visitors. As chalk marks accumulate, overlap and are periodically erased, the work explores how knowledge and meaning can emerge through play, participation and collective authorship.