Installation of “Flower Animal” at MIA, North Terminal.

As annoying air travel is these days, the MIA Galleries at Miami International have been doing a great job in alleviating the tension-filled experience. Throughout the various terminals and even at specific gates, the Division of Fine Arts & Cultural Affairs at the airport have been planting permanent installations, temporary exhibitions, even site-specific performances, often with a very specific Florida slant.

The latest example: Coral Morphologic’s photography series “Flower Animal,” covering the walls in the North Terminal, near gate D-31. The art-science hybrid is the brain child of marine biologist Colin Foord and musician Jared McKay, who explore our coral reefs and other sea life and re-present them in beautiful multimedia and photographic imagery, in order to advocate for the fragile reef and aquatic systems around us. Eleven large metallic-paper prints make up an 80-foot spread.

One of the parking booths at the Port of Miami.

These colorful, fluorescent and magical photographs do look like flowers, as well as planetary orbits, or solar flares. That’s what’s magical: these real native coral blooms, blown up and mounted on the wall, resemble plant life on terra firma, and the workings of the universe – the metaphor is unmistakable, everything is connected. They also are a vivid reminder that the destruction of the coral reefs will reverberate to all aspects of life under and above the sea.

Coral Morphologic created another large installation this year, this time at the Port of Miami. In collaboration with artist Bhakti Baxter, they covered 18 parking booths with vinyl portraits of Miami-specific Zoanthids (soft corals).

So when hauling your luggage across the airport, or helping relatives disgorge theirs at the over-crowded port, take a moment and a breadth to inhale these gems; likely it will relieve the stress, and reconnect you with the beauty around us.