AFROTOPIA
ABOUT THE FAIR Established in 2011, Art Africa Miami's inaugural exhibition in Historic Overtown was the first of many exhibitions during the Art Basel Miami festivities. The inaugural Art Africa Miami opening set a precedent as the largest showcase of contemporary artists from the African Diaspora during Art Basel Miami and continues to grow with this year’s showcase planned for November 30th — December 4th, 2016 at 920 NW 2nd Avenue in Miami. "Art has always been a tool to claim space, build power and to question the injustices that have shaped our social experiences," Neil Hall, Founder. In the world of art and culture, artists are responsible for offering the viewer a chance to challenge society by bringing new meaning to the way we perceive the world. Culture is space where we can introduce ideas, attack emotions, change values and find inspiration. Art is where we can ADEDOBA AFOLABI
imagine what change looks and feels like. Thank you for joining us as we seek to do our part in transforming our world to be more just and beautiful in all we do. Each year, we continue our transformation of the historic community of Overtown. We welcome your to participation. Art Africa Miami Arts Fair is a multidisciplinary exhibition of fine contemporary art from the global African Diaspora. The central idea of Art Africa Miami is to present an array of visual works that pay homage to the centrality of Africa and its descendants contribution to the modern art world. Our aim is to continue advancing artists from the African Diaspora, including artists from Africa, North America, South America, the Caribbean, and Europe. Art Africa Miami brings a vital and essential cultural service to the South Florida community, lending the Magic City with true international flair.
OUR MISSION Now with a prominent voice in the Downtown Miami / Overtown area, the Art Africa Miami Art Fair was the first art fair to solely feature artists from the African Diaspora during the winter art fair season. As a result, we have been a catalyst to attract the elite collectors, art professionals and the art-engaged public that have traveled to Miami from all corners of the globe into the fastest growing art region in the country. It is our mission to create an event that puts this historic area on the art-world’s map, aid in the revitalization of the Overtown neighborhood and its public greenways by creating a landmark cultural event during a time when Miami is at the center of the global art scene. At the cusp of both the Downtown Miami and the Wynwood Arts District, the Overtown neighborhood is the ideal location to host this international art fair. It is a large exhibition space worthy of a museum-level showcase. Between the spectacular installations, sculptures, and panel discussions, through this pioneering effort, we get to experience the Cultural Epicenter of artists from the Caribbean and Diaspora. Thank you for your support of the sixth edition of the Art Africa Miami Arts Fair. PRODUCTION FIRM
MILES REGIS
The Urban Collective is a sustainable lifestyle design brand driven by our passion for innovative design, art and cultural exchange with skilled artisans in developing countries who design beautifully hand crafted products and artifacts. Our brand is a new urban lifestyle concept that supports the work of artisans through our collaboration with non-profit organizations. We support artisans who design, fabricate and offer our patrons a collection of beautiful products that marries the raw authenticity of African craftsmanship with the sleekness of modernity.
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AFROTOPIA AFRICAN DIASPORA AND THE POLITICS OF REPRESENTATION
Working on the premise that Art making is culture making, the 2016 Art Africa Miami titled Afrotopia: African Diaspora and the Politics of Representation assigns itself the unearthing and fecundating of the vast spaces of the possible in African Diaspora reality. Afrotopia explores emerging epistemic shifts, articulates a necessity for new metaphors of the future and renewal of practices and discourses on African Diaspora imagination. The atopos (Overtown) is the site artists, intellectuals and various leaders strive to hasten the advent. Founding a utopia is not to let one glide into self-dreaming but rather to think spaces of the real; another site. These are created through thought and action. Thinking representation of African Diaspora arts in this frame becomes a daunting task as critical clichĂŠs and pseudo certainties, like a halo of mist, blur our realities. For most of the contemporary era, a pseudo universal artistic language articulates an afro-pessimism, presenting without a blink, African Diaspora arts as adrift, with potential but immature, always in a post-stage (Post black, Postcolonial). This speaks of the symbolic violence with which visual expressions of the African Diaspora were (still are) considered, treated, represented, inscribed in the collective imagination on the mode of immaturity, failure, mimicry, peripherized, handicapped and deficient. This propensity by others to make African Diaspora arts a space for projection of their phantasms is old. These dreams produced by others, through a night of sleep saw only partially African Diaspora arts. While aesthetic production is inherent to any culture, it is less sure though that all share the same relationships to the universalism of a mechanistic and reductionist art order that submits the world and its cultural productions to a unicentric frame of legitimization for the profit of a few. African Diaspora arts are the future (Afrofuturism, Afropolitanism) and will be the shallow rhetoric says. What this implies is that we are not now, that our coincidence to the present is still not here. The terms of articulation in which we are presented, in a time to come, indicate the actual lack. The delocalization of our presence in the future perpetuates the handicapping judgment which we are the object.
AFROTOPIA articulates the failures of these formulations in accounting for current dynamics in the African Diaspora, thinking of the deep mutations operating in them, so tied are they to a unicentric discourse which conditions the reading of the African Diaspora real. By inscribing the march of African and African Diaspora societies in a teleology of universal phantasms, these hegemonic categories, by their pretension at being qualifiers and describers of all social dynamics, have denied the creativity proper to African Diaspora societies as well as our capacity to produce the metaphors of our possible futures. By adopting these categories with footprints in a rhetoric of universalism and globalization, some seem to have adhered to that inverted perspective of the human which consecrates the primacy of quantity over quality, of having over being; our presence in the world being evaluated only from the gaze of others and our own fragmented view of ourselves in relation to other selves. In these conditions, why then articulate a thought bearing on the present and becoming of African Diaspora arts? Because societies first institute themselves in their imaginaries. These are the forges from which forms appear to feed and deepen life; and hoist aloft emerging social and human adventures. AFROTOPIA is an articulation of our evolution because we project ourselves into a future of our choosing, thinking the conditions of our sustainability, transmitting an intellectual and symbolic capital to following generations, carrying out a project of society, constructing a vision of the human and defining the finality of our social life. AFROTOPIA is then about extracting ourselves from the dialectics of pessimism and despair; to undertake an effort of critical thinking about ourselves, our own realities and our situation in the world; to think ourselves, to self-represent and self-project. This fecund thought on African Diaspora aesthetics carries the exigency for an absolute intellectual, political and artistic sovereignty. Through it, we arrive at thinking an African Diaspora in movement; out of formulaic concepts. We think anew and resist the myths on the trajectories of African Diaspora communities. Afrotopia is “Self-apprehension�— an apprehension of self by oneself, determined by the possibility of a proper thought. An intimate knowledge of a culture cannot be done from the outside. AFROTOPIA seeks to interrogate African Diaspora cultures through their own categories.
artists
SOLOMON ADUFAH
SOLOMON ADUFAH
As a self-taught artist, Adufah made it his mission “to empower, promote and celebrate the African culture through his portrait paintings.� Since moving to Chicago as a late teen, Adufah has been baffled by the negative perceptions of Africa, tainted by its history and the media, and found it even more troubling that blacks in America shared these limited views. He combats these initial judgements and reflects on the diversity lost in the deceptive mainstream representation of Africa, exploring a self-referential perspective of what it means to be Ghanaian. His practice involves creating large portraits of subjects he meets during his mission trips to Africa. There are two aspects of his art that are endearing; first, how he builds genuine relationships with his subjects and second, his purpose for creating and selling his works. While these aspects drive his practice, the urgency behind what makes his work necessary within a contemporary art context is supported by a different characteristic. His portraits are aesthetically pleasing and his purpose is backed by the need to do something for the greater good.
ADEDOBA AFOLABI
Adedoba worked as a graphic artist with the British overseas development of the UN and taught at Yaba College of technology in Lagos Nigeria prior to his coming to New York. His success at several exhibition and the academics propelled his momentum. He is proud of his first Solo exhibition tagged 'Buffalo Soldier' in 1999 at the art district of North East Miami in Florida and several other shows curated by Asmar b art gallery which launched his fame among the scholars thereby initiating him as a relevant force at the annual Black History Month art shows at the Florida International University. He is well known at various art galleries after working briefly at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the City and has featured alongside the art biggies most especially at the great Dorsey Gallery which produced the likes of Romare Bearden, Otto Neal, and Dr Ojo who connected him with Emmit Wigglesworth.
TURGO BASTIEN
In trying to grasp the art of Turgo Bastien, one first must understand the cosmogonies and cosmologies at work in his coming to being. Turgo is Haitian born with what they call Konesans. For Haitians, there is a strong belief that some individuals are gifted by the Lwa (deities) with unique powers — Konesans which beneficiaries have the power to render beautiful anything they touch. This unique propensity can manifest itself in leadership qualities, spiritual insight or creativity. Thus, a “work of art” that has Konesans transcends ordinary questions about its makeup and confinement to become divine force incarnate. The above concept of creativity institutes a key difference between notions of “beauty” and “Langaj” as aesthetic responses to issues of form. The language of beauty inheres in formal qualities of physical objects while Langaj expresses as a notion of re-membering and defines the embodiment of historical realities in temporal, formal or conceptual structures. As actual and imagined places, the works of Turgo Bastien are topoi--place and topic simultaneously.
ANTHONY BURKS
Anthony Burks is one of the most unique conceptual artists in America. His paintings mix colored pencils, watercolor, pen, and ink, and are characterized by his unusual choice of colors. Whether depicting birds, animals, or people, Anthony is able to convey the intertwining of their beauty and their strength. He chooses his subjects because of what they mean to him, and he tells their stories through his combination of realistic forms, bright colors, and abstract images. A graduate of the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale, Anthony has exhibited at galleries, museums, and events for over twenty years, including: the Endangered Species of Florida Exhibition at the Paul Fisher Gallery; Collaboration: African Diaspora at the Armory Art Center. His painting “Freedom 2001� can be found in the Cornell Museum Permanent Collection. He is presently working on a coffee table book of his paintings and drawings.
MAXIMO CAMINERO
Born in the Dominican Republic in 1962. Maximo Caminero's work is rooted in ancient Taino (first inhabitants of the Antilles) forms resonate in the present with a modern optic. The versatility of his paintings adorning the Caribbean horizon, touching without hiding, the African legacy. His work has not supported or religious ritual other renowned artists such as Wilfredo Lam been studied. The only captures the physical essence of these desires away. His work as he himself defines it: \"It \'s a reflection of thought\" where we wander in a world more real, beyond what man-made, everything is philosophy, he says and adds, nothing is found, man creates his dreams and unreal and is based on fictional worlds. I will not escape it and create my own world, my language. Although my story is recreated in the day by day, in the human struggle in his defects and effects plasmo the subconscious and this is manifested, sovereign and incognito. Backed by a number of prestigious critics, his works have been auctioned at prestigious houses in America and some acquired by American museums.
CARL CRAIG
“My aspiration is to expose the mystery, humility, intrigue, and exoticism of the Haitian Culture through my art. The ultimate joy is to share my works with an international audience”. Born in Haiti, moved to New York with his family at the age of 15. He pursued a Bachelor of Science Degree in Finance and International Business at Florida International University. Carl participated in the conception and implementation of the Programme de Déconcentration de Port-au-Prince introduced by the “Ministère de l’ Intérieur & des Collectivités Territoriales”. During that period, he learned more about Haiti and its culture while he covered the whole territory. Despite his successes in the financial markets and as an international consultant, Carl has chosen to walk away from all the power and structure to satisfy his thirst for creativity by unleashing his talent in the arts: painting, photography and music. As a self-taught artist, he brilliantly and skillfully captures the beauty that is embedded in Haitian culture.
PHILIPPE DODARD
Born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, in 1954, Philippe Dodard is a leading contemporary artist of the Caribbean and the African Diaspora. His artistic evolution was a series of steps, leading to major solo and international exhibitions including, Arte Americas (2008), the Venice Biennale (1999), Biennale of Latin American Drawings, Santo Domingo (1997), and the Biennale of Caribbean and Central America Art, Dominican Republic (1996). Dodard attained international prominence by rejecting the ‘primitive’, ‘naïve’ classification that dogged Haitian art. Dodard superbly blended Haitian, Caribbean and African iconographical elements to create deep complex forms. His recent choice of themes, Initiation, Consternation and Baron-Samedi reflects his transformation into “a human Poto-Mitan,” the channeling pole at the center of the Vodun temple through which the spiritual forces descend to the oumphor (temple).
NAJEE DORSEY
As an artist, Najee Dorsey has developed much in his craft over the years, and has become known for his mixed media collage, digital media collage images of little known and unsung historical figures, as well as nostalgic scenes from African American life in the southern United States. In his work, as Najee chronicles moments in Black life throughout history, he maintains that, “stories untold are stories forgotten�. Far from the days after dropping out of arts college, and becoming uncertain about his future in the arts, Dorsey has forged a successful career as an artist, being featured in numerous solo and group museum shows, television broadcasts and print publications -- a major feat for any artist. As well as these accomplishments, he has skillfully combined his creative edge, and business acumen to develop a steadily growing online community that documents, preserves and promotes the contributions of the African American arts community. Najee now lives in Columbus, GA with his wife, Seteria.
IVANA GROSS
Ivana Blanco Gross is a conceptual artist born in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1965. Studied at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) and the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague, NL (KABK), her work explores her perceptions of different geographical locations and translates into color her connections to the land. The notion of location is emphasized trough the interaction and intersection of line, color and geography. Blanco Gross is the initiator of the Un-Send project. She splits her time between her studios in NY, Miami and s'Hertogenbosch (NL).
NAKAZZI HUTCHINSON
One of Jamaica's most talented artists, Nakazzi Hutchinson graduated from the Sculpture department at the Jamaica School of Art at the top of her year, returning to live in Jamaica after spending many of her early years in Barbados, London, and New York. She was awarded the Mutual Life Artist of the year award, carrying away both prizes, the public award as well as the juried prize. She has exhibited extensively in museums and galleries across the Caribbean and internationally in places such as Miami, New York and Berlin, where she captured the imagination and awe of a wide and varied audience. Her large scale sculpture based installation work utilizes a variety of organic materials, suspended floating life-sized figures. The Jamaican National Gallery has represented her installations and carries her work in their permanent collection. Her African Name "Nakazzi" means woman of Substance" and through her work she continues to strive to embody this ideal.
SHURI JACKSON
Born September, 1986. Multimedia Visual Artist, Curator of Culture, Educator, and Multimedia Artist From the Jamaican Diaspora, Jackson immigrated to the United States at the age of 15 and attended the Jericho High School, in Long Island New York. Excelling in the arts, she went on to further develop her skills and received her Bachelors of Fine Arts, in Arts Education at the C.W. Post campus of the Long Island University in Greenvale New York. Since graduating she has been practicing between New York and Miami. For Jackson, art is refuge, art is healing, art is the facilitator of experiments and the way through which she advances through life. She uses Art to challenge, channel, educate, uplift and renew energies. She was the 2013 artist in residence at the Multitudes Art Gallery curated by Dr. Babacar M’Bow former director and chief curator at M.O.C.A in Miami. He work is Collected by the Old Dillard Museum. An encounter with Jackson Shuri’s work will excite and enliven your contemporary state. Every opportunity is used to impart culture.
RUDOLF KOHN
Rudolf Kohn was born in Bogota, Colombia in 1971. He began his first drawings at age 3 and his first apprenticeship at age 13 with David Manzur. Then went on to completing his degree in Art at Universidad de los Andes (1992), simultaneously, apprenticing with Augusto Ardila. Raised during political turmoil, Rudolf’s artwork is undeniably influenced by politics of the country. Rudolf arrived in Miami, Florida in 1992 starting his work as an artist resident at the Bakehouse Art Complex (BAC). From 1992-2015 Rudolf has been widely recognized and exhibited in Florida, New Jersey, New York, New Mexico, San Francisco (McLoughlin Gallery), Mexico, Puerto Rico, and Colombia (La Pared Gallery). Rudolf featured a solo exhibition with the ‘City of Love’ at Miami Art Space in 2009. The Red Bull, Art of Can Exhibition 2010. His sculpture was exhibited at the Frost Art Museum, Sculpture Garden (2014). Art Basel 2014 Rudolf was in a group exhibit showing paintings and sculptures at Praxis Architecture Space and is currently preparing for a group exhibition at MOCA for Art Basel 2015.
PETER WAYNE LEWIS
World renown artist, Peter Wayne Lewis, is a Professor of Painting Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Boston, Ma and former Chairman of FA2D. Born in Kingston, Jamaica West Indies and immigrated to the USA in 1962 and resided in Sacramento, California, Peter became a US Naturalized Citizen in 1983 and received his Masters of Arts Degree in painting in 1979 from San Jose State University California. He currently resides in South Orange, New Jersey, Boston, Massachusetts, and Beijing, China. His exhibitions are worldwide throughout the Americas, Caribbean and Asia. To name a small few, Seeing Jazz at the Smithsonian Museum Washington DC; Art Document at Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art Sapporo, Japan; Miami Art Museum; & New Orleans Museum of Art. Some of his lectures include American Center Beijing, China, American Center Sapporo, Japan, University of California Berkley, Syracuse University, & San Francisco Art Institute. His curatorial project run the globe as well, such as Ramona Gallery New York Boston High Tea #1, Two Lines Gallery 798- Beijing, China, Renee Cox-Queen Nanny of the Maroons; In conjunction with the Embassy of Jamaica; Han Chang Liang -Perfume Painting, Boston High Tea #2 Master Print+ In conjunction with Massachusetts College of Art Foundation; & Marathon-Yi Ling Laurens Tan Li Xiao Feng.
PAPALOKO
The reduction of contemporary African Diaspora art to the confines of naivety reflect Euro -America’s pasts and are antithetical to an understanding of a human psychology in which an individual is capable of multiple affirmations of self—Papa Loko, the artist, poet, musician, voudou spiritualist. Viewed from an African epistemological framework, we perceive Papa Loko as a specific manifestation of a greater awareness that can be understood through a different cosmogony. Here, reality encompasses the physical body of the living and the luminescence of the soul. Papa Loko creates in this complex system with its tradition rooted in the chants of the “lakou”, the production of an art that speaks “langaj” operating within dynamic heritages in which visual representations incorporate both secular and sacred characteristics. Viewing Papa Loko’s work from this perspective then call for specific notions of creativity to define the artist as, among others, a creator of memory in reference to its triggering capacities inherent in making and viewing of the art.
TESSA MARS
Tessa Mars is a Haitian visual artist living and working in Port-au-Prince. She completed a bachelor in Visual Arts in France, at Rennes 2 University in 2006 and upon her return to Haiti the same year she started working as a Cultural projects coordinator at Fondation AfricAmĂŠricA. She had her first exhibit in 2009 at the Georges Liautaud Museum in Portau-Prince and since then her work as been shown in Canada, France, Italy and the UnitedStates. Since 2013 Tessa Mars has been solely focused on developing her artistic career. Her on-going body of work explores identity through the lens of language and gender and more recently by questioning Haitian history, geography and customs.
EMILIO MARTINEZ
The artistic legacy of Jean Michel Basquiat lives as well in other artists such as Emilio Martinez who works in similar genres, combining social and political commentary with artistic creations; using a variety of surfaces to capture what would remain as escalating and cascading thoughts and ideas. Generated from one of the fundamentals of hip hop, these are forms which are not just attributable to Basquiat but to a way of engaging both ideas and art in unmistakable overlap.
With his origins in street graffiti writing and art, his more constructed studio pieces, including those unmistakable textual inscriptions which must be deciphered force the viewer to stop and contemplate what they are saying in relation to the art on which they appear. This layering of writing on artistic creations came from what we now know was a generous soul caught in a body which could not contain all its powerful motivations and like a firework explodes once it has produced its brilliance.
MOAL
Urban Installation artist, M.O.A.L, currently creates globalnoise in the backstreets and surrounding areas of South Florida, domestically and internationally. Influenced by the German Expressionists and African cultural Roots, M.O.A.L investigates various African tribal symbols, such as the Nsibidi, out of West Africa. Using free flow form of Uli art, for example, along to the rhythm of Afro Tribal House and Reggae, creates an intimate ecosystem musing found objects. Atmospheric rhythmic trance and traditional linear Afrocentric characters transform into layered complex conversations displacing and overstepping material, time and space. M.O.A.L’s pieces juxtaposed and exhibited in modern environments allude and educate the viewer to obscure, and often unknown, Western and South African visual ideologies. Raw use of materials and meditative colorful paintings of primal patterns expressancient humanintrospection. These elements, along with M.O.A.L’s supplementary musings, dialog with contemporary spaces and audiences resulting in expanded understanding of African and visual language.
JON MOODY
As an Artist and Athlete Moody uses his abilities to provoke thought while aiming to break the myth that one is either an athlete or artist. Through artistic expression he brings awareness to social, economical and worldly issues. Jon Moody's goal is to inspire not only other athletes, but everyone to become global ambassadors for change. Recently, he was one of 10 visual artists who partnered with The White House to engage and mobilize the arts community and build broad public awareness around key administrative priorities. The collaboration allowed Jon to showcase his work for 30 days in The White House as preparation for the announcement that October is National Youth Justice Awareness month. Some of Jon’s large scale paintings were regularly featured in Season 2 of the hit show Empire. He has completed projects for Sean “Diddy” Combs, Tre Songz and others.
CHRISTINA NICOLA
Christina Nicola is a mixed media artist from Miami who focuses on highlighting the significance of black men and women through her work. In 2015, Christina Nicola graduated from the University of Central Florida with a Bachelors degree in studio art, specializing in drawing and painting. In the time following graduation, the artist has participated in several shows and is currently showing in two other exhibitions. Christina Nicola uses unconventional and emphatic styles of mark making in her work, as well as rich pigments and unconventional methods of drawing and painting. Nicola employs the use of oil pastels, paint, charcoal and many other mediums as she believes, “the greatest aspect of art making is creating the form by whatever means necessary�.
DR. LORENZO PACE
Born September 29, 1943 in Birmingham, Alabama, Pace wanted to explore, and the city he chose was Paris, France. There, the world of art opened up to him. He attended the Art Institute in Chicago and received both a BFA and MFA, then a doctorate in art education from Illinois State Univ. in 1978. In 1993, his work rose to national attention when he was commissioned to build a monument at NYC's Foley Square paying homage to the African slaves originally buried on that site. In 1991, the remains of over 400 African slaves were excavated during the construction of a federal building in the city's financial district. The City of New York wanted to create a memorial and Pace was chosen. His work resulted in a beautiful 300-ton granite sculpture named "Triumph of the Human Spirit." His sculptures, installations and performance art have received international acclaim and he has exhibited in galleries and museums all over the world. He served as Director of the Montclair State University Art Gallery and presently maintains a studio in Brooklyn.
ADONIS PARKER
Art to me is a form of extreme communion with God. Respectfully and with pride, I am a student of creativity and expression. My life is simply an open book to the inner world of our urban fabrics but the key to the underworld of self-truth, through the eyes of Addonis. I am a master of expressing the depths of emotion and the plight of a people, shunned, feared and disdained. I am a captain of the community of man through a visual port of my surroundings. Being self-taught, I will violate the art code to convey any message necessary to meet such an objective to save lives or strengthen a community. I am a witness to the hardship as well as the high levels of success of the men and women who dared to chase this venture alone; even before me, if none should come after. My work is the eternal flame of voices which society chooses to ignore. I use symbolic rendering and spiritual undertones to convey my message as I have received it. I feel that I must be a gatekeeper of my current time and experience. My work is in fact intense, prophetic, thought provoking, spiritual, emotional, and maybe controversial. I have accepted this crown of distinction and all the disciplines it may provide. The absence of the opportunity of art -----is the absence of civilization.
MILES REGIS
Based in Los Angeles, Miles Regis is a Trinidadian-born artist whose work taps into the emotion and experiences of exotic cultures around the world and presents them in ways that are relevant to today’s modernized societies. With a style reminiscent of many of history’s great master painters, Miles' imagination is saturated with notions, ideas, and images reflective of a world filled with conflicting interests. Miles’ work consists mainly of oversized canvases, often stretching up to twelve feet in length and/or height. With broad enthusiast appeal, his work is in the permanent collection of Intel Corporation, California African American Museum, Senegal's La Musee Borindar and has appeared in association with CNN, Art Basel Miami, The Coachella Music and Art Festival, NextAid World's Day, CCH Pounder (Avatar, The Shield), Million Dollar Listing, American Rag Cie, Manifest Justice, Adobe, Fashion mogul Tonny Sorenson and several art communities around the country and throughout the world.
MWAMBA-SALIM WILSON
For Mwamba, Art is the Rawest form of expressionism, all the images and quotes, phrases and poetry you see in the artwork comes from his recollection of being in a dream state and recalling that information. All the lines and patterns you see in the background of his paintings represent the evolution of sound transferred into color and shape. Most of the writing symbols on the art are Mayan, Native American, Egyptian, Sumerian and his own Mwamba-Salim Wilson coded language. The art is Living Dreams. His art is primitive, colorful, and abstract. He began as a graffiti artist in Houston, TX, in the late 1990’s and evolved into an acclaimed Primitive Abstract and Primitivism painter by the 2000’s. Throughout his career he focuses on the primitivism abstract movement such as wealth versus poverty, integration versus segregation, and inner versus outer experience; poetry, drawing and painting, which married text and image; abstraction and figuration; and historical information mixed with contemporary critique. He also attacks power structures and systems of racism. While his poetics are not acutely political and direct in their criticism of colonialism, he is a supporter for class of struggle in America and for other countries to live free in a democratic society.
CARLOS SALAS
Carlos Salas studied architecture at the Universidad de los Andes (University of the Andes) in Bogotá, Colombia, and painting at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, France. His work is firmly anchored in the Latin American abstract tradition with long lines recalling scarifications, large rectangles filled with polygonal figures with symmetry. He often fills the seemingly abstract designs which in reality represent spaces, pathways, fields and sites of memory. In the work, long horizontal and vertical lines as long musical notes of an antiphon mostly presented in well-defined squares remind us of the essential lesson of cubism he has assimilated. Salas’ geometry is correct. It is animated by the spirit of liberty. So too are his colors; discreet to express the serious joy of the sacred song, but not sad; they are luminous in the twilight from blue to violet, to the almost white yellow. The light of the Bogotá sky, by blurring the tones and accentuating the contrasts highlights the rhythm without suppressing the nuances. Salas has exhibited extensively in Latin America; in European capitals including Geneva, Madrid and Paris; and in New York City. He received multiple accolades in France and his native Colombia for his contributions to abstract art. At the age of 42, he was the youngest artist to ever present a retrospective at the Bogotá Museum of Modern Art.
GENE TINNIE
Dinizulu Gene Tinnie is a New York born, Miami-based visual artist, semi-retired educator, writer, independent researcher, and community activist in historic preservation and cultural affairs, whose formal academic background (including a Fulbright scholarship) is in foreign languages, literature, and linguistics. As a visual artist, he specializes in original drawings, paintings, sculpture, graphic design, and, most recently, in monument design, as well as in museum and gallery exhibition design and installation, with several public art commissions. An avid believer, based on experience, in the transformative power of art as a force in our communities, Mr. Tinnie is a founding member of the Kuumba Artists Collective, and a longstanding member of the venerable National Conference of Artists (NCA), and is the recipient of numerous local awards and honors. He is often called upon as a lecturer and panelist in discussions of historic preservation, cultural arts, and African World Heritage.
NOELLE THEARD
Browsing the Portfolio of Theard is a peregrination into a practice of Diaspora in which an African Diaspora paradigm frames the lenses for an approach to re-presentation. Navigating this Diaspora with a “Marasa Consciousness”; the series Hip Hop, Haiti, Malitogether with Fotokonbit, One Drop and Galeria del Barrio express the relationship amongst diaspora cultures; a call and response type; a constant process of contestation, collaboration, rejection and appropriation; of resistance and acceptation--a dialogue in which we dot cease to be related simply because separated by oceans. The fracturing of lenses cancels the politics of tabula rasa of the humanity of the African Diaspora. Theard’s work re-centers African Diaspora humanity—our laughs and dreams; a ceaseless claim to a humanity in which one is not prisoner of the image but rather is in it, participates to its vitality and contributes to its dynamism. Re-appropriating the gaze, Theard fixes the African Diaspora center stage. Thus, her work is not a cog but a knot, a link, the center of a humanity in an ontological network of the Middle Passage.
ANYA WALLACE
I am not a photographer. I am the narrator obsessed with the telling of a story-- the powerful, life-giving, life- taking historically marginalized culture of between the lines existence. As a member of this hyper-visible, invisible, objectified, and still-objectifying; it is more than instinct to not just "read the lines", but in between the lines in every facet of life. I have come to learn that if there was to be anything of our [black] spirit, our way of being; it needed to be hidden from the oppressor. My aesthetics, as an artist, are rooted in this coding and decoding of messages within my own history and the “us� I come from. At the core of my scholarship, I find that I consistently seek to critically assess where and how people of color fit into the photographic narrative of this country. It is within a larger goal, for me, to study elements that contribute to the self image of women and girls of color. This exploration serves to illuminate the experience of finding value in womanhood, whether tarnished or praised. While doing so, I simultaneously find myself exploring my own access and usage as a black- woman- artist. As a black- woman- artist, my purpose and struggle is to represent the black-woman subject in a non-objectifying, nonexploitative manner. In the end, it remains a battle to insure that my work stand in solidarity- an image that provokes reaction, connection, and interaction.
ANTHONY BURKS
speakers
NEIL HALL, FOUNDER Architect | Urban Planner | Producer TOPIC: “Disruption or Preservation of Historic Overtown’s Cultural Landscape " Thursday, December 1st, 5:30pm
Neil Hall, AIA is a licensed architect with a graduate degree from the University of Florida in Architecture and Design. Over the past27 years, his architectural practice, The Hall Group, has developed an extensive resume in Urban Development Consulting, Urban Planning, Interior Design, and Architecture. Out of his passion for good design, Mr. Hall created The Urban Collective, an urban lifestyle boutique and design studio highlighting the rich aesthetics of African art, as well as, other unique handmade treasures from around the globe. In 2010, alarmed by the lack of diversity of artists and galleries featured in the country's largest and most prestigious art fair “Art Basel Miami”, The Urban Collective produced “Art Africa Miami Arts Fair”, the first large scale art fair solely featuring artists from the African diaspora in an eight thousand (8,000) square foot tent located in Miami’s historic Overtown neighborhood. From its inaugural year in 2010, the Art of Black initiative was born, with now over a dozen additional fairs, art exhibitions, art talks and panel discussions in neighborhoods throughout South Florida, highlighting the contributions of artists from the diaspora.
FELECIA HATCHER Entrepreneur TOPIC: Youth Art Initiative, “Virtual Reality“ Powered by Code Fever Miami Friday, December 2nd, 4pm
Felecia Hatcher is a White House Award winning entrepreneur, badass business rainmaker, bestselling author, globally sought-after speaker, media darling, mother, and Founder of Code Fever and BlackTechWeek. Breathe. She is also the rather awesome former Chief Popsicle at Feverish Pops, a gourmet ice pop boutique and manufacturing brand with a Fortune 500 client roster that would make your head spin. For the past decade, Felecia has dedicated her life to inspiring a new generation of leaders to do epic shit, through her conversational talks on Entrepreneurship, Tech Innovation, Funding and Personal Branding. As the founder of Code Fever and Black Tech Week, Felecia Hatcher is on a mission to rid our communities of innovation deserts by working with community leaders and government to create inclusive and diverse startup ecosystems. Felecia has spearheaded the inclusive innovation and startup movement within the Miami Startup ecosystem focused on getting marginalized groups to become major players in the innovation economy.
BABACAR MBOW Curator TOPIC: “AFROTOPIA Curatorial Lecture”
Saturday, December 3rd, 11:30am
Babacar MBow is the Executive Director of the Florida Africana Studies Consortium (FLASC) and Managing Editor of the Encyclopedia of African Diaspora: Origins, Experiences and Culture Vol. I, II, III. His research focuses on Africa and African Diaspora, and the philosophy of interpretation and culture (PIC). Grounded on decoloniality his publications include: Philippe Dodard: The Idea of Modernity in Contemporary Haitian Art (2008), Plugging: Identity in Contemporary Haitian Art (2011). His new book The End of the African Postcolonial State is forthcoming with Ediciones Jaime Vargas, Bogota Colombia.
JACK TRAVIS, FAIA NOMAC Architect | Interior Designer | Adjunct Professor TOPIC: “Intersections - Aesthetic Collisions between BLACK Culture + Environmental DESIGN" Saturday, December 3rd, 1:30pm
Jack Travis established his namesake design studio in June, 1985. Since that time Jack Travis, FAIA NOMAC has been involved in over 100 projects of varying scope and size. To date the firm has completed several residential interiors projects for such notable clients as Spike Lee, Wesley Snipes and John Saunders of ABC sports. Commercial and/or retail interiors clients have included: Giorgio Armani SPA, Cashmere Cashmere of New York as well as the Sbarro family of the famed pizza parlors. Mr. Travis encourages investigation into Black history where appropriate and includes forms, motifs, materials and colors that reflect this heritage in his work. Travel throughout the United States, Europe, the Caribbean to West and South African countries has given Mr. Travis a most unique focus. Through his work, he continues to make a distinctive and definitive enrichment to the existing American design vocabulary. Mr. Travis' interests have broadened in recent years to include design issues not only concerning cultural content but sustainability in environmental design as well as alternative educational practices that seek to insure the entrance of more students of color into the profession.
BAHIA RAMOS, DIRECTOR Arts Program, Knight Foundation TOPIC: “Art Collecting 101—Who, How, Where do We Start?”
Saturday, December 3rd, 3pm
Knight Foundation works to preserve the best aspects of journalism and use innovation to expand the impact of information in the digital age. As program director for arts, Bahia manages Knight’s $35 million annual investment in the Arts and develops strategy for the Knight Arts Challenge and Community Arts Grantmaking initiative. A native of Brooklyn, New York, Ramos lived in London for two years, consulting with Man Group PLC in its corporate responsibility department. She has also worked as director of government and community affairs for both the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and the Brooklyn Children’s Museum. Her work with Brooklyn Children’s Museum helped to double the size of the museum, raising its profile as a world-class institution and improving engagement with the community. Working with Brooklyn Botanic Garden, Ramos garnered government support for a new visitor center, helping the garden reach out into the city to attract more guests, and connecting it with anchor institutions in the neighborhood.
PATRICIA J. SAUNDERS Art Collector | Associate Professor | University of Miami TOPIC: “Art Collecting 101—Who, How, Where do We Start?” Saturday, December 3rd, 3pm
Patricia J. Saunders is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Miami, Coral Gables where she is the Co-Editor of Anthurium: A Caribbean Studies Journal. She is the author of AlienNation and Repatriation: Translating Identity in Anglophone Caribbean Literature (2007) and coeditor of Music. Memory. Resistance: Calypso and the Caribbean Literary Imagination (2007). Her work has appeared in journals such as: Plantation Society in the Americas, Calabash, Small Axe, Transforming Anthropology, The Journal of West Indian Literature and recently, Feminist Studies. Her second book, Buyers Beware: Epistemologies of Consumption in Caribbean Popular Culture, examines a range of contemporary Caribbean popular cultural modes of expression to argue that the bonds between consumption and citizenship in the region is stronger now than ever before despite higher rates of unemployment and social and economic inequity. Buyers Beware is forthcoming with Rutgers University Press.
ART AFRICA MIAMI ARTS FAIR presents AFROTOPIA Historic Overtown, December 2016 Curator: Babacar MBow, Florida Africana Studies Consortium Producer: Neil Hall, The Urban Collective Team: Yvette Harris, PR Specialist, Harris Public Relations Taj Hunter Waite, Creative Consultant, All Things Taj Conroy Anderson, Onsite Construction Tiffany Waite, Coordinator
Special Thanks: City of Miami, District 5, Commissioner Keon Hardemon Clarence Woods, Director, SEOPW CRA The Entire Staff of the SEOPW CRA Tim Barber, Director, Black Archives Dr. Carole Boyce Davies Miami Broward Carnival Jack Travis, FAIA, NOMA Felecia Hatcher Bahia Ramos Patricia Saunders
Historic Overtown & The Legacy of Clyde Killens Overtown's hallmark is its unique character and resilience of the people who live in it. The Urban Collective continues to spotlight the distinctive cultural heritage of this community with its commitment to hosting the Art Africa Miami Arts Fair yearly in Overtown and creating a burgeoning art and creative scene. Each year we will continue to bring alive venues that were once gems to the community in the 1950’s and 60’s.
Clyde Killens, in front of his many promoter cards. [Source: Miami Music Museum]
During the Fifties and early Sixties, the nightlife of Overtown made today's South Beach seem tame. Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Sam Cooke, Aretha Franklin, and many more superstars played the Knight Beat, the Harlem Square, and other clubs for appreciative locals and visiting celebrities. The main man on the scene -- running clubs and promoting shows -- was a dapper chap with curly hair and charm to spare. He was Clyde "Glass" Killens, famous for carrying around a mystery mug -- til this day contents unknown. At his death on February 2, 2004, the 95-year-old cancer victim still lived at NW Second Avenue and Eleventh Street, in the heart of O-Town. The 6th Annual Art Africa Miami Arts Fair is proud to debut the recently renovated Historic Clyde Killens Hall located at 920 NW 2nd Avenue in Overtown.
Partygoers during Overtown's heyday. [Source: Miami Herald]
Exterior of the Sir John Hotel in Overtown, shot sometime in the 1960s. [Source: Miami Herald]
Singer/actress Josephine Baker and boxer Joe Louis with friends at the Knightbeat club, inside the Sir John Hotel. With note to Clyde Killens, promoter, from J. Baker. [Source: Miami Herald]
AFROTOPIA AFRICAN DIASPORA AND THE POLITICS OF REPRESENTATION