(b. 1970, Cuba. Lives and works in Spain) Alexandre Arrechea graduated from the Instituto Superior de Arte (ISA) in Havana in 1994. For twelve years he was a member of the art collective Los Carpinteros, until he left the group in July of 2003 to continue his career as a solo artist. The interdisciplinary quality of his work, rooted in the scrutiny of power structures, reveals a profound interest in the exploration of both public and domestic spaces. The visual manifestation of this was constructed as a highly aesthetic display of surreal architectures and the absurd engineering of impossible mechanical devices as if born out of the set of a science fiction B movie.

José Bedia is a contemporary Cuban painter known for his Neo-Primitivistic figurative style. Bedia’s large-scale paintings are inspired by his Santería faith, an amalgamation of Yoruba, indigenous, and Christian beliefs, with his works frequently depicting mythical elements, altars, and other sacramental imagery, often serving as a pointed critique of colonialism. In one of his best-known paintings, Figure Who Defines His Own Horizion Line (2011), the line of sight emerges from a colossal head and breaks at the wilting drapes of a flag. He was born on January 13, 1959 in Havana, Cuba and studied at the city’s Instituto Superior del Arte. Bedia participated in the first Havana Biennial in 1984, and later was selected to represent Cuba at the Venice Biennale in 1990. Two years later, he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in New York. The artist has shown work all over the world, notably including a solo show at the Fowler Museum in Los Angeles.

José García Cordero is a Dominican-born artist that lives and works in Paris. His paintings employ rich, dark tones and vivid absurdist imagery, which are at once disturbing and beautiful. Cordero's work is representative of his personal experience of Carribean and European cultures, and posess a sense of innate cruelty and savagery. His deep adoration of nature is evident in the spiritually evocative depictions of plants and wildlife.

Roberto Stephenson is Haitian Italian and was born in Rome in 1964. After studying graphic design, he specialized in architectural photography. Passionate about experimentation, he discovered the potential of computer manipulation while in London in 1998 – 2000. His series Haitian Portraits was exhibited in Martinique, Miami, and Paris. He has also exhibited in Rome, London, New York, Ahmedabad, Port au Prince, Santo Domingo, Oslo, La Havana, Bamako, Paris, and Berlin. Stephenson has recently been awarded the Grand Prix du Jury du Salon d’Art Contemporain de Montrouge, France. He is based in Port au Prince.

Thierry Tian-Sio-Po (b. 1964) was born in SaintLaurent du Maroni, French Guiana and studied fine arts in France and at the Fine Arts College of Martinique. Recent participation in group exhibitions include OMA – Outre-Mer Art Contemporain at L’Orangerie du Sénat, France (2011), Triennial of Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic (2010), Kreyol Factory, Paris (2009), Latitudes at the Hôtel de Ville de Paris (2002), 2nd Biennial of Painting of the Caribbean and Central America, Santo Domingo (1994), and 4th Biennial of Havana, Cuba (1992). In 2011, Tian-Sio-Po exhibited his solo show, Thierry Tian-Sio-Po: Inextricable, at the Fondation Clément in Martinique. He currently lives and works in French Guiana.

Sergio Garcia was born in Havana, Cuba in 1959. He immigrated to the United States with family in 1961, settling in New Jersey until 1969 when they moved to Miami, FL, where he continues to live and work. Essentially a self-taught artist, Sergio embraced painting as a means of expression, exploring his personal identity, both past and present within the context of the ever present human condition and the socio-political environment. He states “that his art comes to life neither to be self-satisfactory, nor to play a role in the arts, He simply plunges into the unknown.” His work is in museums, galleries, corporate and private collection in the U.S. and abroad. He received several awards and honors and has been the subject of numerous articles and major publications.

Selina Román was born in Florida in 1978, and she received her Masters of Fine Arts degree from the University of South Florida in 2013. She has participated in residencies with the Visual Artists Network and Diaspora Vibe Cultural Arts Incubator in Miami. Her work, which is in numerous private collections, has been exhibited nationally and internationally at institutions such as Kenyon College in Ohio, Edna Manley College of Visual and Performing Arts in Kingston, Jamaica, and Universidad del Sagrado Corazón in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Her work explores ideas of femininity, perception, liminality, memory, place, and how the invisible offers more answers than what’s visible.

Luis Cruz Azaceta, born 1942, is a Cuban American visual artist. He left Cuba as a teenager in 1960. After immigrating to the United States, Azaceta lived in New York, graduated from The School of Visual Arts and began his long career as an artist. Since the late 1970s the paintings and drawings of Luis Cruz Azaceta have been addressing the moral and ethical pulse of this country. Early works focused on urban violence, the Aids epidemic, and racism. His current works relate to the rapid state of change in the world at large - war, terrorism, displacement, identity, and collapsing economies.

Edouard Duval Carrié is a contemporary artist and curator based in Miami, Florida. Born and raised in Haiti, Duval Carrié fled the regime of “Papa Doc” Duvalier as a teen ager and subsequently resided in locales as diverse as Puerto Rico, New York, Montreal, Paris and Miami. Parallels thus emerge between the artist’s cosmopolitan lifestyle and his artistic sensitivity toward the multifaceted identities that form his native Haiti. At heart, Duval Carrié is an educator: he challenges the viewer to make meaning of dense iconography derived from Caribbean history, politics, and religion. His mixed media works and installations present migrations and transformations, often human and spiritual.

Tessa Mars was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, in 1985. She completed a B.A. in Visual Arts at University Rennes 2, France, in 2006. Her on-going body of work explores identity, first through the lens of language and gender and more recently by questioning geography and history. She is interested in how Haitian history, customs and rituals inform our identity as a people and how we express it collectively and individually. Her work investigates notions of patriotism, sovereignty and confronts them to the reality of Haitian daily life. It raises questions about how the legacy of Haiti’s revolutionary past shapes our society, about the transmission and loss of memory, about strategies individuals come up with to reconcile past and present. It also raises questions about womanhood, freedom and the fight for it.

Alexis Esquivel is a Cuban visual and performance artist whose work has often explored themes of history, race, and identity, particularly in a Cuban cultural context.Esquivel creates canvases, performances, and sculptures infused with parody, in which he subverts the division between history and popular beliefs. He erodes the imaginary pedestals of national heroes, from the indigenous chief Hatuey to José Martí and Che Guevara.

Marielle Plaisir is a French-Caribbean multimedia artist who combines painting, drawing and performance to present intense visual experiences. Her work examines social domination from the time of slavery until now. The common thread is a critique of prejudice, according to which political power is supposedly “a natural fact.” Through her art, Plaisir declares that power is not a “natural fact” but rather, a political one that emerges under specific conditions within specific sociocultural and historical contexts. She engages in the deconstruction of those conditions and reconstructs a world in which no one dominates or reigns; instead, everyone moves freely between reality and imagination.

Renée Stout grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and received her B.F.A. from Carnegie-Mellon University in 1980 where her focus was on painting. However, in 1985, immediately after moving to Washington, D.C., she began to explore the spiritual and cultural roots of her African American heritage through her increasingly sculptural works, which found their early inspiration in the aesthetics and philosophy of Kongo ritual objects. Stout’s art attracted the attention of museum 30 curators across the United States and led to her becoming the first American artist to have a solo exhibition in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art. Inspired by the African Diaspora, historical and cur- rent world events, as well as everyday life in her DC neighborhood, Stout now creates in a variety of media, including painting, drawing, mixed media sculpture, photography and installation. She has been the recipient of awards from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, the Joan Mitchell Foundation, the Bader Fund, the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, the Gottleib Foundation and Anonymous Was A Woman. She was also the recipient of the Driskell Prize, awarded by the High Museum of Art (Atlanta, GA) and the Sondheim Award from the Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts. Stout’s work is featured in many museum and private collections, nationally and internationally, including the Smithsonian’s new National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC. Renée’s homage and contemporary reinterpretation of Aponte’s “Book of Paintings” aims to create the same kind of focal object or talisman for a revolution that was Aponte’s original intent for his book of collages, drawings and paintings. And like Aponte, she has purposely left the imagery open-ended in order for it to be interpreted on many levels. It is her desire that re-imagining the book will help us to channel our collective energy to coax the original out from its hiding place.

Born in Haiti in 1929, Emmanuel Merisier gravitated toward the arts and joined the Foyer des Arts Plastiques and Brochette Gallery. In 1968, at the age of 35, Merisier emigrated to the United States, settling in the New York City area. Subsequently, Merisier, regularly attended classes at the Art Students League and, from 1977 - 1981, studied at the Visual Arts School in New York. Emmanuel Merisier’s paintings reflect and meld his Haitian cultural heritage with a lifelong passion for studying and drawing inspiration from 20th century master artists including Picasso, Matisse, Chagall and Beckmann. His colorful and dynamic canvases represent a truly unique combination of modernism and Haitian primitive style. Merisier’s favored subjects depict Haitian society, politics, spiritualism and folklore, as well as interpersonal relationships - particularly those between the sexes.

Jamaica-based visual artist Ricardo Edwards says his detailed portraits are each infused with “little fragments” of his personality. If that’s the case, any meeting with him would sure to be a mind-blowing experience of beautiful renditions of Afrofuturist imaginings, as is the through-line of his work. Pulling from cultural histories, the artist’s paintings are rife with symbolism: there is a bloody police officer wading through water with a horned skull covering his face, and in another photo a person with tribal tattoos bursting through a similar skull.

Adrienne Chadwick is a visual artist born in Toronto, Canada, with origins in Belize,
Central America. Her work has been exhibited at Aqua Art Fair, Diaspora Vibe Cultural Arts Incubator and Bridge Red in Miami , Girls Club Collection, Gallery 1310, and The Project Space in Fort Lauderdale, and Spady Museum, Delray Beach, among others. She earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from New World School of the Arts and a Master of Public Administration from Nova Southeastern University.

Haitian-Born, Miami-based visual artist Annick Duvivier is known for her mixed media collage paintings. Duvivier studied Fine Arts at Altos de Chavon 2008 in the Dominican Republic (affiliated with Parsons in New York). Soon after she became an artist in residence at Festival arts Gallery, Haiti, and organized alongside Art Historian Dr. Marie-Alice Théard exhibits for more than 25 prominent Haitian artists. She graduated
with a BFA in Visual Arts at Miami International University of Art & Design 2019. Her artwork is diverse but has recurring themes of identity, fertility, memory, nature, and a fascination for the human body.

Asser Saint-Val is a Miami-based artist and a native of Haiti. He earned BFAs in
painting and graphic design from the New World School of the Arts and University of Florida. His art has been exhibited throughout the US and the Caribbean. He is represented in numerous private collections, including those of the Rubell Family Collection, Arturo Mosquera & Lisa Collection, Mireille Chancy Gonzalez, and Francie
Bishop Good. Saint-Val has twice received the South Florida Cultural Consortium Fellowship Award in 2006 and 2012, the DVCAI Award, and numerous Community Grant Awards for his ARTINTHESKY project, a series of multi-sensory interactive public art installations.

Under the threat of persecution, Haitian-born Carl-Philippe Juste and his politically active family were forced to flee their homeland in 1965. Settling in Miami’s Haitian community, Juste flourished academically and attended the University of Miami. He vigorously pursued photojournalism and, since 1991, has worked as a photojournalist for The Miami Herald where he has carried out extensive assignments in Pakistan,
Afghanistan and Iraq as well as locally. Juste has been a guest lecturer for various national organizations and universities and has received numerous awards for his work, including the Pulitzer Prize and the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award. His work has been exhibited in various prestigious institutions and galleries in Cuba, Dominican Republic and the United States.

Charo Oquet (Dominican Republic,1952), is an inter-disciplinary artist, filmmaker, programmer, and researcher. She is based in Miami, FL. In her work, Oquet uses a large range of media to
expose a multiplicity of narratives. The work explores the colored bodies within a post-colonial space using a variety of materials to talk about the visibility, invisibility of those excluded bodies
and geographical place as sites of cultural and political meaning. She produces research-based projects that expand the conception of history, evidence, and subjectivity. Her work has always served a pedagogic as well as aesthetic function, asking viewers not to take information for granted, but to question the motives behind how representational choices are made and the methods through which they are structured. As artist and researcher, she has engaged with anthropology, and post-colonial studies opening the black universe of Afro- Caribbean cultures to the canonical and institutional history of art.

Born in Albuquerque, NM, and raised in Boston, MA, Christopher Carter infuses a blend of ethnic and urban influences into all of his work. His bold and decisively organic sculptures strongly reflect his African-American, Native American, and European heritage. His assemblages embody power and energy, accentuated by the source materials he selects for his creations. Rarely using anything “new”, Carter fashions a chorus of images composed of recycled woods, metals, glass shards, rope, resins, and a variety of discarded objects, that when brought together seek to depict traditional concepts in an innovative and creative way.

Corinne S. Francilus (b.1987) is a Haitian American artist who was born and raised in Miami, Florida. Art is a constant driving force in her life. She began drawing at five, which led her to be a visual art magnet student in middle school and a fashion design student at Design and Architecture Senior High School (DASH) in the city’s Design District. In 2010, Francilus received her BFA in illustration design with a concentration in painting from Savannah College of Art and Design. In 2011 She was selected to
showcase one of her paintings at the Museum Of Contemporary Art in Georgia. Corinne has also had her work showcased in galleries and exhibitions all over the world. She has illustrated children’s books, designed album covers and more for various projects and artists. Corinne believes in the beauty of self expression, and is grateful for the gift
of creativity. Between the years of 2014-2016 she toured the US performing music with her band Telekinetic Walrus. Her favorite project to date is the 6 x 32 feet mural she painted for Miami’s historic Belafonte TACOLCY Center in 2018. This mural is a part of a community garden project and it depicts two other worldly beings in a magical garden surrounded by butterflies and crystals.

My name is Ezekiel Binns. I was born and raised in Miami, Florida. I currently attend the Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture at The Cooper Union. I attribute my becoming to my mother and father, both Caribbean natives who not only fostered my childhood curiosities but encouraged me to be myself while pursuing my rising interests. Distilled within my work is my mother's occupational history of caregiving and my father's lifelong trade as a craftsman.

Francisco Maso (b. Havana, 1988) is an AfroLatinx visual artist living and working in Miami, Florida. Maso received a Bachelor’s degree in Stage Design from the Instituto Superior de Arte (2014) and is a graduate of both the Behavior Art School (2009) and the San Alejandro
Academy of Fine Arts (2007). Maso uses painting and photography to explore the concept of power and the relationships between blackness, civil rights, and the police system through the lens of his personal experiences in Cuba and the United States. Recent solo exhibitions include “Where’s Your Favorite Place for Political Art at Home?” at Dimensions Variable (2020). Selected group exhibitions include ""A.I.M. Biennial"" at South Florida' public places (2020), “Time for Change: Art and Social Unrest in the Jorge M. Pérez Collection” at El Espacio 23 (2019), and ""Cintas Foundation Fellowships Finalist Exhibition 2019-2020"" at Lowe Art Museum (2019). Maso is a recent recipient of The Ellies Creator Award (2020) and a nominee of the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grant (2020). He received the Oolite Arts’ Home + Away residency at Atlantic Center for the Arts (2020). His works are part of Jorge M.
Pérez Collection, Brillembourg Capriles Collection, Nina Fuentes Collection, among others. He also is a two-time finalist of the Cintas Foundation Fellowship in Visual Arts (2017, 2019).

To my family and childhood friends I am known as Gaalo, a nickname given to me by my uncle. The name on my birth certificate is obscured to most but Gaalo is a warm reminder of all the matriarchs in my family that have used it throughout my childhood - even now. I was born on late June day 1976 in Potoprens, Ayiti. I moved to New York in August 1989 via Miami. In March 2010 I packed my bags for Potoprens still straddling the shores of New York and more recently Miami. Having lived in these cities, I see myself of all of these cities, but maybe what I have become is a New Yorker and a Potoprensyen. Despite my love and care for the countryside of Ayiti, I am at heart an urbanite influenced by the culture of cities and the many issues which affect cities within the realm of art and architecture. I started painting at the beginning of graduate school
in architecture while at Pratt Institute (1999 to 2001). In 2003 I started making work that propelled me to further explore more this side of myself. Two years later, a major event in my life prompted me to further display my emotions on large pieces of canvas. Since then painting has become an emotional outlet to explore issues of migration and language.

GeoVanna was born and raised in Los Angeles California where she received her BFA at Otis College of Art and Design. Her recent solo exhibitions include: When we open every window (2019), Gr_und, Berlin; Play, Lay, Aye (2019) The Bass Museum, Miami; PLAY, LAY, AYE: ACT III, (2019) Commuter Biennial, Miami. She has participated in
group exhibitions at The Corcoran School of the Arts and Design (2019) Washington, DC; Dimensions Variable (2019) Miami; University of Maryland Art Gallery (2019) Maryland; PS120 (2018) Berlin; NGBK (2018) Berlin; 5 Car Garage (2018) Los Angeles. Recent commissions and awards include Exotic Naps, a video commissioned by The Institute of Contemporary Miami (2020); A WaveMaker grant from The Andy Warhol
Foundation and Locust Projects (2020); The Ellies Visual Arts award by Oolite Arts for Supplement Projects (2018). She is founder and curator of Supplement Projects, an alternative art space & community meeting point based in Miami; Co-founder of performative reading club Read What You Want!; and a member of queer/feminist arts collective COVEN Berlin, working on exhibitions and events that focus on body politics, gender, labor, sexuality, and art.

Johnnie Bess is a Miami based, multi-media artist whom specializes in ceramic art and portraiture. After receiving his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree with concentrations in painting and photography from Howard University in 2009, Bess began to teach visual art in Washington D.C. public schools. In 2011 the artist settled his family in Miami, Florida where he has been teaching and showing work ever since.

Laetitia “Laeti” Adam-Rabel is a Haitian-American artist who lives in Miami, Florida. She is a wife and mother to a toddler girl. Laeti studied Fashion Design at Parsons the New School for Design in New York and received her Bachelor of Science in Art Education at Florida International University. She uses various media to address social and personal issues such as global warming, rising sea levels, blackness, feminism, inclusion, and more recently, her role as a new mother in creating a better world. She
uses painting, textile arts, photography, illustration, clothing design, videography, and sound art to portray beauty, while conveying her sometimes painful emotions. Laeti is a lifelong learner who seeks to discover something new from every encounter.

Leyden Rodriguez-Casanova (b. 1973 Havana, Cuba) is an Artist, Curator, Co-founder and Co-director of Dimensions Variable (DV) and Fulano Inc. His work has been exhibited widely at Sculpture Center, Socrates Sculpture Park, Abrons Arts Center and White Box in New York; Museo de Bellas Artes and Factoria Habana in Havana, Cuba; ZONA MACO Arte Contemporaneo in Mexico City, Mexico; Capri Palace and Villa Lena in Italy; Prosjektrom Normanns in Stavanger, Norway; PAMM, Frost Museum, The Bass, MOCA, DV and Locust Projects in Miami. His work is in many public and private collections around the world and institutions like PAMM, Frost Museum, Cintas Foundation, and The Bass. He has been written about in the New York Times, The
Miami Herald, Art Nexus, Arte al Dia, Artforum, Artsy, Sculpture Magazine,
Hyperallergic, The Miami Rail, and Miami Magazine. Since founding DV in 2009, he has organized and curated many projects by local and international emerging artists.

I'm a Jamaican-born, Miami-based multimedia artist. My work includes poetry, street art, fashion, performance, event coordinating and visual art. The interest, need and love for creativity began as an early teen, it was the greatest and healthiest way to express
and interpret my life at the time and it just stuck with me until now. Creating is my life. My poetry expresses social injustices, personal experiences and the common struggle of everyday life. My street artwork reflects bright colors and intricately mixed vivid geometric patterns. I call this method "Tapenology."inspired by the tropical landscape an architecture of Miami. It can be seen all throughout the streets of Miami. My other art works consist of intricate collages and acrylic on canvas.

Mark Fleuridor is a Haitian American artist born and raised in Miami, Florida. He graduated from the Maryland Institute College of Art with a BFA in Painting. Fleuridor explores his own personal history within his background and familial experiences. These topics are explored through mediums such as painting, performance, quilting and collage. Fleuridor has completed artist residencies such as Vermont Studio Center (VT) and the Oxbow Artist Residency (MI) and is currently attending Oolite Artist Residency in Miami, FL. Mark Fleuridor received the Redbull Artist Grant and is a recipient of the Oolite Arts Ellies Awards 2020 for his project Being Held, a project to create a public mural in Miami that counters uncertain times by focusing on people, families and their
love for each other. Fleuridor has exhibited his works in various exhibitions including; Idiom and Taxonomies at Oolite Arts in Miami, Florida, We Are One at Creative Alliance in Baltimore, MD and B_19 (Best of Baltimore 2019) at Baltimore City Hall.

Michelle Lisa Polissaint is a visual artist and arts organizer based in Miami, Florida. As an artist she explores the nature of human interaction through textiles and photographs. Her organizing practice is focused on the intersections between art, community and activism. She produces community-based activations and encourages artists and
community members to form collaborative relationships. She is a resident artist at Bakehouse Art Complex and is represented by Spinello Projects.

Morel Doucet (b. 1990, Pilate, Haiti) is a Miami-based multidisciplinary artist and arts educator. His work portrays a contemporary depiction of the Black experience, cataloging a powerful
record of environmental decay at the intersection of economic inequity, the commodification of industry, personal labor, and race. Doucet's Emmy-nominated work has been featured and
reviewed in numerous publications, including Vogue Mexico, Oxford University Press, Biscayne Times, and Hypebeast. He graduated from the New World School of the Arts with the Distinguished Dean's Award for Ceramics. From there, he continued at the Maryland Institute College of Art, receiving his BFA in Ceramics with a minor in creative writing and concentration in illustration. Doucet has exhibited extensively in prestigious national and international institutions, including at the Havana Biennial; the African Heritage Cultural Arts Center, Miami; the National Council on Education for Ceramic Arts, Pittsburgh; American Museum of Ceramic Art, Pomona; Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami; Flaten Art Museum; St. Olaf College; São Tomé et Príncipe; Haitian Heritage Museum, Miami; and Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum, Miami.

Najja Moon is a Miami based artist and cultural practitioner, born and raised in North Carolina. Her practice is centered on the idea that art is utilitarian. An amalgamation of practicalities that improve her life; design and language, cultural responsibility and community, her visual arts practice uses drawing and text to explore the intersections of queer identity, the body and movement, black culture and familiar relations both personal and communal. Her most recent projects and exhibitions include: Time
Sensitive, 2020, Spinello Projects (Miami); Dust Specks on the Sea, 2020, Little Haiti Cultural Center (Miami); Grounded, 2019, Spinello Projects (Miami); SPRTS Issue 9, 2019, Endless Editions, NYABF @MoMA PS1 (New York); How to Patch a Leaky Roof, 2019, Commissioned by O, Miami (Miami); 2 & a possible, 2019, Supplement Projects x
Arts.Black (Miami); Project Art: Currents, 2019, Museum of Contemporary Art (North Miami); Paradise Summit Miami, 2018, Emerson Dorsch Gallery (Miami). In 2015, She Co-Founded the BLCK family a Miami based creative collective responsible for the installation of mobile performance art shows centered around culinary, visual, performing and social arts. She Co-Founded the former queer social club for womxn, This Girls lunchbox (2017-2019) that centered art as a convening point."

Onajide Shabaka, b. 1948, lives and works in Miami, Florida. Shabaka was awarded an MFA [2000] from Vermont College of the Fine Arts. Shabaka’s art practice is focused primarily on the
ethnobotanical, geological, archeological, historical and biographical themes related to the African Diaspora and Native American cultures. Through a well developed research based walking practice he has explored the environment and its biology allowing site specific histories and nature to reveal the untold historical narratives from the past in the form of film, photography, sculpture, and mixed media works on paper. Selected solo exhibitions include, “Alosúgbe: a journey across time,” The Studios of Key West, Key West, Florida (2020);
“Alosúgbe: a journey across time,” Emerson Dorsch, Miami, Florida (2019); “Floridian Lacunae,” The Art and Culture Center/Hollywood, Hollywood, Florida (2019). Selected group exhibitions:
""Why Shouldn't We Talk About These Things at the Table?,” Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, Florida (2020); Round 49: “penumbras: sacred geometries” Project Row Houses,
Houston, Texas (2019); “Reconstructing Identity,” Museum of Contemporary Art of the African Diaspora, Miami, Florida (2019). Recent awards: Locust Projects Wavemaker Grant and Oolite Arts Ellies Grant to facilitate two residencies in Brunswick, Georgia (2020) and in Darien,
Georgia (2019). Shabaka is represented by Emerson Dorsch Gallery, Miami, Florida.

"When I was a child, my family and I moved back to Port au Prince, Haiti, my parent ́s homeland. It was in the 1970 ́s during the tyrannical dictatorship of Papa Doc Duvalier. My great aunt and uncle were the creators-owners of Radio Caribes which was situated next to the
private house on which we lived. As a young boy, I saw a painter on a ladder creating the logo for Radio Caraibes and I knew instantly that I wanted to be a painter when I grew up. Art was a
way to deal with strong emotions, that could only be expressed through this form. When I returned to New York as a preteen, I discovered the Lower East Side, punk music, and the Boy Bar and the Pyramid Club. I came out as an Afro Franco Latino. During this time in the 1980s I contracted AIDS from my first lover in Florence, Italy, while I was studying art abroad. I came to Miami to be close to family and seek medical treatment. As I got stronger, it was at this time that I was searching for a deeper meaning in life and I applied to the ArtCenter of South Florida. I started a residency there and for 3 years began my professional practice. It was exhilarating
and challenging. Due to my experiences of illness, loss and recovery, my art speaks to spirituality, divination, gay sexuality. My work fuses all these elements as I collage with decoupage all these disparate themes into unified paintings as I work with acrylic, enamel,
mixed media on board. As an example, my painting I am an American, 2008, is inspired by my mother as the matriarch dressed in Victorian clothes, while the central figure calls upon Toussaint Louverture seated on a horse collaged with Toile wallpaper. At my most recent
residency in 2019, I spent 3 months in Quito, Ecuador at No Lugar residency, I was able to travel to the Mindo Valley for a week and document various birds.

Sonia Báez-Hernández She holds an M.F.A. in Painting and Drawing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, an M.A. in Sociology from the University of California Los Angeles, and a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Puerto Rico. She employs an interdisciplinary artistic practice to create community-based art interventions
and experimentations. Báez-Hernández’s body of work includes: abstract painting,
drawing, printmaking, fiber. installation, performance, film, and poetry to configurate the social, imaginary, and institutions. She has exhibited at the national and international level, CAS Gallery, University of Miami, the Archival Space, Radical Archives WAAM, at
ArtServe, FLL, Fat Village Projects, Fort Lauderdale, Concretes Art Projects, Doral, Morgan Gallery Transylvania University and Centre College Norton Center FL Lexington Art League, Lexington,, Teresa Arte Actual, Mexico City, Miami Performance Festival
International. She is the recipient of an Artist-in-Residence with the Miami ProjectArt (FL) Artist-in-Residence with the International Sonoran Desert Alliance and the Tri- National Sonoran Desert Symposium at Ajo, (AZ), Visiting Fellow with the Arcus Center for Social Justice and Leadership, (MI), the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, Inc (NY), the Spirit Award, and Reel Sisters of the Diaspora Film Festival, NY. She has received an
Honorable Mention, and been nominated as Best Documentary for Territories of the Breast at the 5th Annual Urban Mediamakers Film Festival, Atlanta, (GA).

Haitian-born artist Sophia Lacroix is known for her hyper-realistic paintings that depict scenes of everyday life in her home country. She began painting and drawing as a child in Haiti and used art as a source of happiness and escape from her often-challenging home environment. She and her family emigrated with to Miami at the age of fifteen. After quickly learning English, she
excelled academically in high school and earned a full academic scholarship to the University of Florida where she graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree. The year after graduation, Sophia taught herself how to paint with oil medium and began pursuing her career as an artist while supporting herself by working fulltime in the social services and non-profit sector.

Stephen Arboite (b. 1987) of Haitian descent was born and raised in New York City and now resides in Miami, Florida. Arboite’s work considers beauty outside of classical aesthetic paradigms, and places an emphasis on spiritual transformation and evolution of human consciousness. Arboite attended State University of New York, Purchase College for drawing and painting. He has exhibited nationally including a debut solo exhibition with N’Namdi Contemporary in Miami, Prizm Art Fair, SCOPE NY/MIA and is currently in a group show entitled Translating Valence: Redefining Black Male Identity at the Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts in Michigan.

Turgo Bastien, original founder of Art Creation Foundation for Children, is an artist of Haitian descent. His work transcends his culture, spiritual essence and life experiences to present a global vision of truth and reality. Turgo was born in Haiti, grew up in Haiti and his brain, heart and spirit are mapped and hard-wired to the culture of Haiti. Overlaid is his life in the diaspora and his travels which also influence that which he sees and expresses in his work. Turgo Bastien belongs to that generation of artists who
arrived in South Florida in the 1980s and who had already established themselves in their countries. However, his experience in the U.S. led him in a direction entirely different from his contemporaries. What is different in Turgo Bastien is his singular approach to metaphor and the conscious look for new direction and language which could inscribe his identity in a contemporary expression. Turgo tells a story that rises as counter discourse to the story of mainstream art in which other cultures have been treated as marginal. Turgo sees his own marginality and unbearable cultural shock of an individual moving from one part of the world to another. The work must find another identity or recover what has been lost before it sinks into nothingness. But this is not simple. His paintings derive from the rhythmical space, filling patterns of the mask and
the multidimensional state of mind of those from his background. His pictures are not mere patterns but images and their forms whether painted or sculpted, invest the surface with mysterious life. The outcome of his sight is heightened awareness that what we have in common is indeed far greater than what divides us.

Vanessa Charlot is a Haitian-American documentary photographer working in Miami, Florida and St. Louis, Missouri. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature and Sociology from Florida Atlantic University. Her photographs have been published in New York Times, Oprah Magazine, Vogue, The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, The Atlantic, New York Magazine, The Guardian, Artnet News, Buzzfeed and other publications.

Vernando Reuben is a mixed-media visual artist. Originally from Kingston Jamaica, the artist migrated to West Palm Beach, Florida at age 5. Reuben received a B.A. in English from Morehouse College in Atlanta, GA and moved to New York City to begin work through a fellowship with Teach For America. After working with the New York City Department of Education, Vernando has continued to work through various non-profit organizations to continue his outreach as a Teaching Artist. The majority of his works comprise of multi-media and digital portraits and compositions.

Vickie Pierre’s artworks have been displayed in solo and group exhibitions in venues throughout South Florida, including Little Haiti Cultural Center, Perez Art Museum Miami, Oolite Arts, and the Art and Culture Center/ Hollywood, among others. National exhibition locations include White Box, New York, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C. and the Museum of Contemporary Art of Puerto Rico as well as international exhibitions at Habitation Clément, Martinique, the International Museum of Modest Arts, France, and the Oriente Gallery and the Center for the Development of Arts in Cuba. Vickie Pierre was a recipient of the 2017
South Florida Cultural Consortium award representing Miami Dade County. Most recently the artist was selected as one of ten artists in the sixth annual 2019 Orlando Museum of Art, Florida Prize in Contemporary Art. Pierre’s artworks can be found in private and public collections
including Progressive Art Collection, Cleveland; Millennium Partners Collection of Contemporary Art at The Four Seasons, Miami and The Polk Museum of Art, Lakeland, among others. The artist was born in Brooklyn, New York. She lives and works in Miami, Florida.

Yanira Collado lives/works in North Miami, FL. Artist residency fellowships include Bridge Red Art Center, Miami, FL (2013-present), Project Row Houses, Houston, TX (2018), Oolite Arts,
Miami Beach, FL (2019 - present), The Joan Mitchell Foundation residency, New Orleans, LA (2020). Awards include Ellie Creator Grant (2019); Joan Mitchell Foundation Fellow (2018). First
place 2013 South Florida Biennial at the Art and Cultural Center/Hollywood. Collado's work has been featured in numerous group shows, including Gallery, New York, NY (2018); Monarchs at
the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, FL (2018); Connectivity, Deconstruction, Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum, Florida International University, Miami, FL (2018); Transmissions, The Franklin, Chicago, IL (2016); Dirt, Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, FL (2016);and Ascent: Black Women’s Expressions, Nova University, Ft. Lauderdale, FL (2015). In 2017, Yanira Collado had a one-person exhibit at the MDC Museum of Art + Design, in collaboration with Bridge Red Studios. Site specific installations at the non-profits, Under the Bridge Art Space and Farside Gallery (2018). Recent exhibitions include an installation at Dimensions Variable, Miami, FL and Storage Project Space in NY, 2020.

Zeek is a contemporary artist who has mastered the use of digital photography to instill hope, enlighten and inspire as well as expose injustice, exclusion, marginalization and dehumanization of the indigenous peoples of the world. Zeek is a native of Port-au-Prince, Haiti.
His family moved to the United States when he was a young boy and he later joined them when he was 9 years old. Growing up in Little Haiti, Miami, FL, Zeek found that he was not far from the culture he knew too well. However, the pride for its history and world contribution appeared to be lacking. As a lover of art and history, he was always fascinated by his heritage and desired to change the narrative of the images of Haiti being depicted throughout the world. Zeek’s
philosophy is “You cannot attach a price tag to cultural experiences. Each experience comes with a different value and appreciation that leads to personal growth.” His passion for his culture has fueled projects like, “Sound of Tanbou” and “Haiti Too Rich to be Poor”. In these
acclaimed series, Zeek shares his unique perspective for capturing raw, unparalleled images. His work has been featured at Art Basel, the University of Kansas courses in Caribbean Culture
and the Diaspora, ArtServe, Counter Valence, and other exhibitions across South Florida area. He's a recipient of a Congressional Certificate and is the founder of Juicing With Art and co-
founder of A Reflection of Me, Inc. Zeek earned his bachelor’s degree in psychology and master’s degree in behavioral science and resides in South Florida with his wife Natasha and five beautiful children.