Izia Lindsay is a mixed media artist who explores with both digital and traditional media. His artwork addresses symbolism in Caribbean iconography that is rooted in tradition but interpreted with contemporary ideas. Caribbean iconography is used as a basis to create his multi-layered artistic narratives. His subject matter tackles issues of identity and class in a post-colonial society. His research stems from material culture, indigenous societies, traditions and the ever-changing landscape of the Caribbean. Lindsay uses bold, geometric shapes that juxtapose and intersperse to form his multilayered artistic pieces. Lines and shapes are conceptually layered and can be characterized as controlled naturalism. The thematic whole is a cultural narrative reproducing the dualities of his turbulent, cosmopolitan, Caribbean life.

Jamilah Sabur is an artist working across various disciplines including performance, video, and installation. Sabur was born in Saint Andrew, Jamaica and received her MFA in Visual Arts from University of California San Diego in 2014 and her BFA from Maryland Institute College of Art in Interdisciplinary Sculpture in 2009. She is interested in embodied cognition, social mimicry, dissonance, ritual, and the uncanny. She has recently exhibited and performed at Boston Center for the Arts, Boston, MA; Herron School of Art Gallery, Indianapolis, IN; Dimensions Variable, Spinello Projects, Miami, FL. Sabur lives and works in Miami, FL.

Jared McGriff is a Los Angeles-born Oakland-based artist. His abstract, figurative and portrait watercolor and acrylic paintings are inspired by visual distortions, memory fragments and ephemera. Capturing the expressions, cultural cues and transitory familiarity of his surroundings, Jared’s work is at once accessible and universal in its depiction of the human condition. His approach to the collective conscious is informed by both his international travels and time in the American West. His voyages are distilled in his paintings, with their simple line, color and composition. “I’m interested in the spaces that exist between our vision and cognition. Our memory only registers a fraction of what we see on any given day. What gets lost in the mechanics of vision – this visual waste or unstructured data – informs my work, and how I approach my practice.”

Jean Blackwell Font is a mixed media artist, an arts marketer, and arts administrator based in Miami, FL. She is the co-founder of Font Squared, providing arts marketing to nonprofit arts organizations and artists, and of collaboARTive, a nonprofit arts organization that provides valuable resources to visual artists in Miami-Dade County. Working in assemblage, mixed media, and collage, Jean uses everyday images and objects to explore complex themes and emotions, delving deep into the human psyche to reveal the unexplored nuances of the human condition. Influenced by artists Betty Saar, Doris Salcedo, Mimmo Rotella, Julie Mehretu, and Mark Bradford, Jean is constantly developing her visual vocabulary to express her bold ideas and concepts. By telling the stories of everyday people in a way that is both universal and deeply personal, she is creating a timeless body of work that will continue to resonate with viewers for years to come. Jean holds a Bachelors degree in Art History from Florida International University, where she was invited to join Phi Beta Kappa, the nation’s oldest and most selective liberal arts honor society. She is a member of ArtTable, the foremost professional organization dedicated to advancing women's leadership in the visual arts, and serves on Grant Review Panels for Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs. Her artwork has garnered the attention of important collectors in Miami and is part of Florida International University Special Collections.

“Holding space for the misaligned moment is about a disrupted urban childhood, the climate crisis, the ravages of war, and the parallels between them. Urban architecture, functional objects, and decorative heirlooms have served as the background for my most challenging situations. Because of this, I notice the trash on the ground, floating in the air, the evolution of our structures, and the people thought of as inconsequential and riff-raff. What is left behind tells a story. My encounters with nature as a young adult were of awe. The fecundity of nature and connection to a community can remake a place and home. The symbiotic relationship between these ecologies revitalizes. A re-centering occurs through reparations and new connections, unabashedly bearing their scars while growing together. People and places can mend when left un-assaulted, though forever altered and hopefully wiser. From this lens, I find my empathetic relationship with local and current events across the globe. I repurpose the same glass I saw smashed in the streets and abandoned buildings. I use this material for its beauty, strength, and fragility. It contains and protects, but if broken, it fails its contents and becomes dangerous to those around it. I cut, fuse, bend, blow, cast, and crush glass. My work spans from functional to sculptural and combines to become an installation. Once manipulated, it is reborn, losing the stigma of being refuse, unwanted, broken, and loved anew. “ Jenna Efrein, from Brooklyn, NY, lives and works as a glass sculptor and designer in Miami, FL. She received her MFA from Alfred University School of Art and Design in Sculpture/Dimensional Studies ('09). Efrein is currently a Senior Lecturer of Glass at the University of Miami. Her work is about a disrupted urban childhood, the climate crisis, and the ravages of war. Predominantly, she uses glass for its material qualities to create connections and meaning. Since moving to Miami in 2014, she has had four solos and participated in over 30 group exhibitions. The Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs and FUNDarte awarded her an "Artist Access Grant" ('18 & '23). A resident since 2015 at Miami's Bakehouse Art Complex, Efrein is an active and intrinsic part of the Miami art community. She was awarded a competitive Merit Scholarship for The Vermont Studio Residency ('18). As a part of their Home and Away program, Oolite Arts sent her on an artist retreat at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in 2021.

Jenny Perez has created a style which reflects the energy of street art and her admiration for formal abstraction. The finished images found in her newest body of work represent the shadows of her past, and the whispers of her forward journey, as she sees it. The titles of her paintings are simple observations, poetic markers, and moments of change. A strongly driven Caribbean-American artist, Perez paints with a zest for exploration, relentless reworking, editing, a tireless preoccupation with the idea of process as the focal point. Perez’s beginnings as a painter centered around her daily observations of Miami’s golden age of street art. Being heavily influenced by the street art scene and a number of hugely important artists who she befriended, Perez has taken her learned skills and carried them into the formal studio setting, creating a stylized, electric and experimental language all of her own.

Jessica Freites is a multidisciplinary artist and teaching artist with a centralized focus in sound, based out of Miami, Florida. Her work revolves around the relationship occurring between the subconscious mind’s effect on communication; be it external, internal, written, verbal, non-verbal, sonic, visual, etc. and communication’s effect on the subconscious mind. She is especially interested in the bridge that is built, or may already exist between listener and receiver and what occurs within that in between space…

Born in 1955, Joël Nankin lives and works in Guadeloupe. Painter, musician, but also political activist, he has made his life a fight for creole identity. Passionate about percussion, he founded in 1979 the AKIYO group, a musical project and separatist movement. Later, campaigning for Guadeloupe independance, he is judged for committing attacks and threatening the French territory integrity, and is imprisoned from 1983 to 1989. Behind bars he discovered painting and has been influenced by the Haitian pictorial universe, Kandinsky and Mark Rothko. Nankin began working with pencil and soon moved on to colour. He uses mixed media, ink, acrylic, spray. His really efficient works are poems dedicated to people that suffer, denounce domination and injustice. Violent in the way of using colours, abrupt and scheming, it seems to be the reflection of his political commitment.

Joelle Ferly graduated in Photography in Paris, and also got a MA in Fine Arts from from the Central Saint Martins School of Art London, where she lived for 15 years. Upon returning to Guadeloupe in 2008 she found L’Artocarpe, an international artist platform which promotes contemporary art at an international level. L’Artocarpe has run for over 10 years and managed over 80 residencies, conferences as well as exhibitions. Info: www.lartocarpe.com. Jo continues to have exhibitions abroad: her practice includes performances; art video as well as sound. Jo represented Guadeloupe at the Havana Biennale in 2012.

Johannes Barfield is an American visual and sound artist whose interdisciplinary practice spans installation, video, photography, extended reality, collage, and music. His work explores themes of childhood memories, joy, extinction, and the music played at family cookouts, often delving into cultural restitution and speculative futures. Born and raised in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Barfield earned his Master of Fine Arts from Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU). ​ Now based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Barfield is an assistant professor in the Honors College at the University of New Mexico, where he teaches art and humanities. He is an award-winning artist whose work has been exhibited at renowned institutions, including the Greenville Museum of Art, where he presented MARAUDERS, a three-person show alongside Antoine Williams and Donté K. Hayes, exploring future artifacts, new mythologies, and cultural restitution. His recent exhibitions include The Sun Rises Spite of Everything at Davidson College, which featured artists such as Pope.L, Alexandra Bell, and Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, and Reckoning and Resilience at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, a group exhibition addressing themes of identity, loss, remembrance, trauma, and healing. ​ Barfield’s artistic achievements have earned him numerous awards, fellowships, and residencies, including the Mint Museum Atrium Health Award, the Toby Devan Lewis Fellowship, the Carson Center for Emerging Media Arts Black Public Media Residency, the Merriweather District AIR Residency, the Fine Arts Work Center Visual Artist Fellowship, Lighthouse Works Fellowship, ACRE Residency, MASS MoCA Residency, and a VCU “10 Under 10” award recognizing distinguished alumni. His work has been exhibited in institutions such as the Nasher Museum of Art, the Mint Museum, the PAAM Museum of Art, Van Every|Smith Galleries, 1708 Gallery, and Circle Contemporary, among others. Barfield is currently developing a speculative science-fiction narrative centered on Pilot Coaltrain, a former archaeologist tasked with returning looted artifacts in a distant future shaped by a dying sun and portal transportation technology. Through this and other projects, he continues to push the boundaries of art, storytelling, and culture.

Juan Gonzalez aka ERMAN fuses his interests of art and fashion into creations that are all one of a kind, utilizing mostly reclaimed and post production goods. As designer/owner of ERMAN in NYC, Juan presented seasonal lines of better dresses to an international clientele. Upon moving to Miami in 1990 as accepted resident artist at Art Center South Florida, he started presenting art to wear utilizing vintage fabrics. He has been an invited guest lecturer at FIT in New York, Utah State University, Colorado State, Edna Manley College in Jamaica and The National Gallery, Nassau. He has a concurrent practice in visual arts and an extensive exhibition curriculum.

Juan Ernesto Requena is a Venezuelan-born artist with his studio practice in Mumbai and Miami. Through textile, powder, film, sound and digital works, he provides a visual narrative of his life on themes that revolve around memory, nature and the human condition. He was part of the artist collective that exhibited at the inaugural Kochi-Muziris Biennale at Mattancherry Palace, Kochi, India, in 2012 and recently exhibited at the Tout Monde Festival 2019 in Miami, presented by the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States. Juan considers himself an archivist whose goal is to preserve human history.

Born in London, England on June 4, 1975, Julian Marley is the son of reggae legend Bob Marley and Barbados-born Lucy Pounder. Growing up as a youth in a musical atmosphere, the Grammy Award Nominated roots-reggae musician, singer-songwriter, producer and humanitarian quickly adopted a musical lifestyle, and at an early age and became a skillful, self-taught musician mastering the bass, drums, guitar and keyboards. During Julian’s formative years in Jamaica, he began to study under legendary reggae veterans such as Aston “Family Man” Barrett, Carlton Barrett, Earl “Wire” Lindo, Tyrone Downie and Earl “Chinna” Smith, all of whom inspired the then fledgling song-bird. In 1996, Julian released his debut entitled, Lion in the Morning, which launched him into the public eye. The album was a conscious effort and culmination of his musical development to date and reflected Julian’s growing maturity and musical sophistication. Recorded at Tuff Gong studios in Jamaica, Lion in the Morning is Julian’s own testament that clearly reflects his roots and heritage. The record was followed by a successful International tour with The Uprising, which included performances in Jamaica, New York City, Japan, Brazil and Mexico. via: reggaeville.com

My work is governed and guided by my emotions, as I attempt to understand and search for the role and positions of a woman. Through the use of fibrous material, my works explore the impact and intrusion of the ‘Other’ on the ‘I’; the ‘Other’ in representation of either an external or internal being to the self. The works emphasizes the social insecurities and turmoil that a woman faces as she struggles and becomes displaced by her daily life in an attempt to satisfy herself, partner, family, friends and life on a whole, which all create an enterprise for conflict. The ‘I’ becomes absent as the Other prevails and creates a structure and void of neurotic divergence within. The current direction of my work has explored the social impositions placed on the female body, with regards to the female reproductive systems and the womb in particular. The roles played within the various stages of the female reproductive cycle are continuously critiqued, sometimes to the point of an analysis of its presence or absence, due in part to perceptions of whether the reproductive roles are being played or not. Such impositions results in the dissection of the body, both physically and psychologically. Women see the womb as an Other, a regulator of relationships with the Other. In attempting to understand the self in relation to the Other, it becomes an enterprise in conflict. My artwork manifests such emotional conflicts, especially given that the level of impact of the Other, guides the direction of the artworks produced; and perhaps, make the works autobiographical and confessional. Peculiarities define the relationships between the I and Other(s) and presence play an important role in such situations. The presence of the other verses the absence gives meaning to the notion of being. Presence and absence may explicitly rely upon the states in which it is found and it is this state that is expressed.

Katie Numi Usher is a multidisciplinary artist based in Belize. Katie works across performance, sculpture, painting and embroidery, and her practice explores Blackness and interrogates Black female erasure within both the colonial history of Belize and the present day. She is particularly interested in the lack of visibility of Black women within art history and uses her work to challenge the cultural institutions of Belize to address this imbalance. Katie regularly utilises online social media platforms as virtual galleries, challenging the gatekeeping of traditional museum and gallery spaces and providing a space and a platform for other Belizean creatives to connect with both their community and the wider Black diaspora.Born out of a 2022 artist residency at Gaswork, the “Eating Sugar in Front of Henry Tate” performance series emerged and continues while the Government of Belize navigates local sugar prices and the relations between sugarcane farmers.

Katrina Andry (b. 1981, New Orleans, LA, USA) challenges the ideology of individualism by examining inequalities and resulting degradation as the result of our color-based prejudices. She argues the belief in individualism allows Americans to turn a blind eye to inequality, suggesting barriers to well-being lie with the individual and not also within our social structures, in spite of documentation of the collective experiences of these groups and data on outcomes of disfavored groups. Andry earned an MFA in Printmaking from Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA. She has participated in exhibitions at the New Orleans Museum of Art, the Katonah Museum of Art in Katonah, NY, and Marc Straus Gallery, New York, NY, as well as had solo exhibitions at The Halsey Institute in Charleston, SC and the Hammonds House Museum in Atlanta, GA. In 2021, Andry was a participating artist in Prospect.5. Andry’s work can be found in the prominent art collections of 21C Museum, Saint Louis, MO, the Petrucci Family Foundation, the New Orleans Museum of Art, Union College, and the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans, LA. Andry currently lives and works in New Orleans where she maintains a studio.

Kearra Amaya Gopee (they/them) is an anti-disciplinary visual artist from Carapichaima, Kairi (the larger of the twin-island nation known as Trinidad and Tobago), living on Lenape land (New York, NY). Using video, sculpture, sound, writing and other media, they identify both violence and time as primary conditions that undergird the anti-Black world in which they work: a world that they are intent on working against through myriad collective interventions. They render this violence elastic and atemporal--leaving ample room for the consideration and manipulation of its history, implications on the present and possible afterlives. In the spirit of maroonage, they have been developing an artist residency in Trinidad and Tobago titled a small place, after Jamaica Kincaid's book of the same name. They hold a MFA from University of California, Los Angeles; BFA in Photography and Imaging from New York University, and are an alum of the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. They obsess about artist residencies at asmall.place. If you are Black, feel free to reach out for the password to access a small place.

I think a simple way to characterize my work and my intention would be to say that I try to produce material for reflection, which allows observers to ask themselves questions that they do not usually arise. Several painful personal experiences, echoing the current status of women, namely its representation in society, symbolic and physical violence against them in the world, led me to express plastically a form of revolt against all forms of domination, the more prevalent for me being male domination. I’m looking for evolving visual forms of expression what explains the evolving nature of the concept that I developed and I named “Vagina”. This concept has several aspects and is built from several techniques including in situ drawing, installation, video, sewing, embroidery or photography. By using the installation medium, I position myself in a process of exploration that gathers several techniques.

I am greatly inspired by elements from daily life in the multicultural Surinamese society. Normal everyday scenes such as carefree and relaxed celebrations and gatherings, the lively hustle and bustle at the marketplace, people in colorful traditional clothing such as the popular Surinamese kotomisi, are a continuous source of inspiration. I also find great pleasure in painting peaceful and pristine natural scenes and landscapes from our rich tropical rainforest. I am unequivocally attracted to the beauty of Surinamese nature. I also have a special affinity for the old and historical. Subjects and materials from our countries history truly fascinate me and I will in some way or another always incorporate historical themes and materials in my work. I am known for example to salvage shutters and doors from old deserted or condemned wooden buildings which I then transform into unique painted art objects which, aside from their artistic value, in my opinion also possess a valuable historic quality. I like to experiment with several materials, styles and techniques and never limit myself to a predetermined plan during my creative processes. Figurative as well as abstract paintings, fine art prints done in several techniques, wooden sculptures and other multimedia experiments with found or natural materials on canvas, paper and hardboard are all part of my work. Fibers from palm trees and natural pigments which I extract from mahogany wood are materials I currently enjoy working with.

Kim Yantis is a visual artist who fueled by collaboration, sewing, and design. Her current project with Lucinda Linderman, “Suiting-up for the Future,” is a wry runway show and workshop series of sustainable workwear and utilitarian accessories that act as “Wearable Tools for the 21st Century.” Together they create demonstration pieces, allegorical costumes, take-away postcards and performance works.Garments and accessories are available for purchase and commission.

‘As an artist it is not my intention to simply create a pretty picture, because I have a greater purpose in mind. Through my art and poems I hope to contribute to raising the consciousness of the general public and to encourage discussions regarding those rather forgotten but so important subjects. ‘ With my art I express my thoughts and emotions on several subjects related to the social and political circumstances in Suriname and other places around the world. Initially, many of my artworks and especially my installations cause a shock effect under the general public, but that is exactly my intention. I want to confront the public with those subjects which they are so often inclined to ignore or just close their eyes to. By doing so I hope to force people in Suriname to think about these controversial subjects and hope to break the tradition of silent acceptance in our country. The revolution of 1980, the December murders of 1982 and the effect those historical events have had, and still have, on our society today, are a recurring theme in my work. But also current social and political issues, in Suriname as well as abroad, are subjects I touch upon regularly. My technique is often influenced by the inspiration I receive from the methods of my predecessors out of the era of Dadaism. The use of collage techniques and simple objects is currently characteristic for my art. I also often write poetry which in some cases relates to a specific work of art. As an artist it is not my intention to simply create a pretty picture, because I have a greater purpose in mind. Through my art and poems I hope to contribute to raising the consciousness of the general public and to encourage discussions regarding those rather forgotten but so important subjects.

lance minto-strouse is a multidisciplinary artist working with painting, sculpture, digital art, film and collage. He explores temporality through the history of reclaimed materials to create dialogue concerning, systematic iniquity, disposability, community and race. Minto-strouse is an alchemist who applies the transformative process to find new and more relatable ways of understanding humanity . He sees the outside world as an extension of his studio. He assembles interactive community based sculptures to generate dialogue that reflect new understandings of the past as a way to build our future. Lance crafts this as a way of honoring and paying homage to rituals rooted in his Afro-spiritual ancestral origins. of Contemporary Art in North Miami (MOCA), also Arts 4 Learning, Teen Residency Program and later, Perez Art Museum Miami’s (PAMM) Perez Teen Council. Lance began to commit more time towards his creative passions by matriculating at the New World School of the Arts, a public high school and college in Downtown Miami, FL. Currently, Lance Minto-Strouse lives and works in Miami, Florida, pursuing studio and sound arts, as well as curatorial studies. He recently accomplished multiple site-specific community interventions addressing themes of gentrification, isolation, and racism throughout different South Florida neighborhoods. Lance also participated in “The Flag Project”, Bridge Red, North Miami FL, 2021-2022, “The Matrix of Creativity: Where the River Meets the Sea,” New Orleans African. American Museum, LA .2021 “Follow Me By The Tracks,” North Miami, FL. 2021 “A Wonder in the Wilderness,” Vizcaya Museum, FL

Laura Ann Samuelson (they/them) is an interdisciplinary artist working in contemporary performance, sculpture, and writing. Their work follows the transmission of feeling across objects, sites, and bodies, searching for new strategies to help us bear impermanence, attachments to living, and to one another. Laura Ann’s projects have been presented in Colorado, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, California, Germany, Sweden, and France, and they have been an artist-in-residence at the Denver Art Museum, Dance Initiative, Skogen Arts Sweden, and the Colorado Conservatory of Dance. Laura Ann currently collaborates with Ondine Geary, and has worked extensively with Colorado-based performance groups such as Joanna and the Agitators, square product theatre, as well as Buntport Theater Company, and Screw Tooth Theater Company. They are mentored by Michelle Ellsworth and have toured with Ellsworth’s POST-VERBAL SOCIAL NETWORK. In 2020, Laura Ann received an MFA in Dance from the University of Colorado-Boulder, with secondary emphases in visual art and somatics, and a graduate certification in Emergent Technologies & Media Arts Practices from the College of Media, Communication, and Information. There, they received the Center for Arts & Humanities Graduate Fellowship & the Charlotte York Irey Scholarship for their creative work and research. Additionally, Laura Ann holds a BA in dance & writing from Hampshire College and is currently a Feldenkrais practitioner in training under Alan Questel.

Lauren Shapiro currently lives and works in Miami, Florida. Shapiro received an MFA from the University of Miami in 2016. She integrates ceramics and technology to uncover and communicate insights from the natural world, often collaborating with scientists to influence projects by the diverse ecosystems of South Florida and beyond. Selected solo exhibitions include "Future Pacific" (2020) at Bakehouse Art Complex, Miami, Florida; "Garden Portals" (2021) at Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden, Miami, Florida; and "Fragile Terrains" (2018) at Bianca Boekel Galeria, São Paulo, Brazil. Selected group exhibitions include "Intricate Oceans, Coral in Contemporary Art" (2023) with Coastal Discovery Museum, Hilton Head Island, South Carolina; "Design Miami" (2021) with Todd Merrill Studio, Miami, Florida; and "Projektraum M54" (2017) in Basel, Switzerland. Shapiro received awards and commissions from the New York Foundation for the Arts (2023), Knight Foundation(2021), Andy Warhol Foundation (2019), Miami Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs (2020-2023), and Art in Public Places (2021,2022). Her artwork is part of the Soho House Art Collection and Jorge M. Perez Collection.