Emmett Moore

In Riviera, Emmett Moore imagines an exhaust pipe tying itself into a knot, reflecting his fascination with automobiles and his increasingly conflicted relationship with gas-powered machines. Evoking an ouroboros, the ancient serpent consuming its own tail, the sculpture suggests a machine consuming itself as it moves toward obsolescence.

Constructed from stainless steel exhaust pipes, Riviera is both a tribute to and a eulogy for the combustion era. Automobiles helped shape Miami Beach, bringing generations of tourists to its shores, yet their emissions have contributed to the seas that now threaten it. The twisting pipes also recall the city's expanding flood-control infrastructure, blurring the line between the machinery contributing to environmental change and the systems designed to combat it.

Adorned with an automotive emblem invoking the natural world, the sculpture suggests hope that the ingenuity behind these machines might ultimately be redirected toward preservation. Installed at the historic Eden Roc, Riviera reflects on the intertwined histories of tourism, technology, and the natural environment in Miami Beach.

Emmett Moore is a Miami-based artist and designer whose interdisciplinary practice moves between art, design and architecture. His work examines relationships between built and natural environments, using functionality as both a structural premise and conceptual provocation.

Working with everyday objects, Moore reframes familiar forms through shifts in material, color and context. His practice often incorporates secondhand goods, repurposed construction materials and found refuse, collapsing traditional hierarchies between the refined and commonplace while exploring broader cultural and ecological narratives.

Moore’s work has been exhibited at the RISD Museum, Frost Art Museum, Miami Art Museum and Bass Museum of Art and is in the permanent collection of Pérez Art Museum Miami. He was the first Miami-based designer to present a solo exhibition at Design Miami. His work has been featured in Art in America, The Guardian, Architectural Digest, Cultured, Artsy and The Art Newspaper, among others.