GENERATOR: USF Contemporary Art Museum

An expansion of the University of South Florida College of Design, Art & Performance's Contemporary Art Museum, GENERATOR is an incubator of new ideas and a place for expanded artistic experimentation. Primarily focused on the moving image and time-based contemporary art, the USF Contemporary Art Museum, GENERATOR offers a new cultural dimension to the St. Petersburg arts district that contributes to the city’s prominence as an arts destination while offering free public access to an inclusive space for creative exploration, research, and experimentation. 

GENERATOR: USF Contemporary Art Museum builds upon the museum’s distinguished history of innovative and bold programming, while shining a light on scores of untold stories and emerging voices as relayed principally through digital media, film, and advanced visualization technologies and platforms. Projects will focus on issues of equity and justice while using the unique perspective of artists to illuminate diverse knowledge, excluded histories, and practices for future resiliency in an uncertain time; additionally, programming will be inspired by an expanded understanding of our contemporary climate that highlights local and global environmental, social, and political concerns. 



Sam Hamilton, Te Moana Meridian at Oregon Contemporary for Converve 45, 2023. Credit: Mario Gallucci

Sam Hamilton, Te Moana Meridian at Oregon Contemporary for Converve 45, 2023. Credit: Mario Gallucci.

Te Moana Meridian: How the Prime Meridian Shapes the World and the Case for Relocating It

August 25 - October 18, 2025
Harbor Hall Gallery, USF St. Petersburg
1000 3rd St S, St. Petersburg, FL 33701 - Gallery entrance on South end of building

Sam Hamilton/Sam Tam Ham (b. 1984, Auckland, New Zealand/Tāmaki Makaurau, Aotearoa) created Te Moana Meridian as a vessel for proposing a radical new United Nations General Assembly Draft Resolution to formally relocate the prime meridian from Greenwich, London, to Te Moana-Nui-ā-Kiwa/the South Pacific Ocean. Since its inception at an 1884 conference in Washington D.C., the prime meridian has functioned to implicitly serve the ambitions of the British colonial empire. Rather than serving as a "beacon of humanity," the prime meridian today more resembles a bygone imperial relic. As an original operatic performance and five-channel video installation, Te Moana Meridian proposes to elect a new "center of the world" while acknowledging that doing so has the potential to reframe the dynamics of global power. Hamilton proposes this center to be the open waters of Te Moananui-ā-Kiwa/the South Pacific Ocean. According to Hamilton, the prime meridian should be "anchored in the global commons and personified by the ocean; connective, circulatory, omnipresent, integral to all life. To avoid drowning, we must become the ocean." Te Moana Meridian is curated by Christian Viveros-Fauné, organized by USF Contemporary Art Museum.

 


EDISON PEÑAFIEL: MARE MAGNVM (A Floridian Odyssey/Una Odisea en la Florida)

August 24 - October 26, 2024
Harbor Hall Gallery, USF St. Petersburg
1000 3rd St S, St. Petersburg, FL 33701 - Gallery entrance on South end of building

MARE MAGNVM (A Floridian Odyssey/Una Odisea en la Florida) is a panoramic video installation featuring a stylized, monochromatic sea populated by 14 boats, each with its own unique collection of characters caught in a perpetual loop. Every 30 minutes, the film’s characters arrive back where they began. Despite appearing larger than life, their boats are constructed of various found objects, including wood, oil drums, and tires, pointing to real-life scenes of migration across bodies of water. 

The name MARE MAGNVM comes from the Latin for “Great Sea,” the term the Romans used to describe the Mediterranean. The word “mare” has a complicated history, being associated with evil spirits and terrors in various cultures, including in Old English and Old Irish. Today, the waters of the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, along with other sites of mass migration, reflect an ongoing horror, as millions of migrants flee war, instability, and climate change. MARE MAGNVM does not refer to a single migration event, but rather expands the viewers’ experience to encompass the phenomenon as a whole. A panoramic artwork, MARE MAGNVM immerses viewers in the struggle of crossing borders, alerting them to a future in which rising waters will push unprecedented numbers of people away from the places they call home. 

EDISON PEÑAFIEL: MARE MAGNVM (A Floridian Odyssey/Una Odisea en la Florida) is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts. GENERATOR: USFCAM and its programs are generously supported by USF College of The Arts; USF St. Petersburg; the Lee and Victor Leavengood Endowment; and the St. Petersburg Downtown Partnership. MARE MAGNVM was produced with the technical and creative support of MAD LABS and Immersiva.

 


SUPERFLEX: This Is The Tip Of The Iceberg

October 6 - November 22, 2023
Harbor Hall Gallery, USF St. Petersburg
1000 3rd St S, St. Petersburg, FL 33701 - Gallery entrance on South end of building 

GENERATOR: University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum presents its inaugural exhibition, SUPERFLEX: This Is The Tip Of The Iceberg, which explores a world where human life depends on coexistence with other species. Emerging from SUPERFLEX’s in-depth research into the deep sea, biodiversity, and the climate, the installation immerses viewers in two parallel and interconnected realms–a terrestrial space unsettled by rising water and a submerged space in the ocean’s depths–to signify the impacts and consequences of climate change, especially relevant to Florida and its coastal communities, and prompting the imagination of a future in which all lifeforms coexist as ecological equals. 

SUPERFLEX: This Is The Tip Of The Iceberg is curated by Sarah Howard, Director of GENERATOR: USFCAM, and organized by USFCAM. GENERATOR: USFCAM and its programs are generously supported by USF College of the Arts, Tampa and St. Petersburg; the Florida Department of State, Florida Arts & Culture; the Lee & Victor Leavengood Endowment; and the Stanton Storer Embrace the Arts Foundation.