[Narrator] Art Loft is brought to you by the Friends of South Florida PBS.

Art Loft, it's the pulse of what's happening in our own backyard, as well as a taste of the arts across the United States.

In this episode, delving into the diaspora, we meet Rosie Gordon-Wallace, a force of nature on the local art scene for three decades, and learn what she's cooking up now.

We head to California to meet a legendary dancer and learn about her storied career.

At Fountainhead Arts, it's the woodwork of Ato Ribeiro.

And the RYTHM Foundation takes us back in time with Jesus Aguaje Ramos and the Buena Vista Orchestra.

For the past three decades, this scientist turned art curator has been nurturing and supporting local artists of color with her Diaspora Vibe Cultural Arts Incubator, it's a practice, she says, began out of necessity.

I want to explain that there is a bubbling sense of urgency in my body to get this work done, and it has been there for a long time, it didn't just happen as I get older.

Because there are so many on earthed artists with talent, and I know talent is not the only thing, but there are ones that have real talent that have not been identified, they have accidentally been ignored.

In a purposeful programmatic way, Diaspora Vibe Cultural Arts Incubator is determined to continue to seek funding and for artists to go away, leave their environment, leave their loved ones, and go away and pay attention to themselves.

I'm Rosie Gordon-Wallace, president and curator of Diaspora Vibe Cultural Arts Incubator, an incubator space in Miami that primarily works with Caribbean artists.

I came to America fully baked as an adult, I studied medical microbiology.

And the incubator incubation process in microbiology is everything, you know, we take one day old shakes, we do our viral cells.

It is a part of the practice.

So, the incubation, and everybody's an incubator now, you see it in all of the news spaces.

But for me, it is really an, not only an informed practice, it is a daily practice of taking care.

The nurture and the rest has been a part of my life from the very beginning.

We started at the Bakos in 1996, and the start was predicated because many of my peers whose children had gone off to the major art schools, Parsons, RISD, you know them, had no return to Miami with the notion that they could walk to a gallery with a portfolio and hand it in and that they would get called for a show.

No, that's not how it works.

And so, this group of young artists were getting really discouraged that they weren't being seen by the major galleries.

And I basically said, let's stop complaining and do something about it.

There was no business plan, we just started meeting and decided that we're going to do an exhibition.

You know, in 2024, everybody's talking about community, right?

How we're getting in, how we're supporting each other.

In the Caribbean community, in the black and brown community, in the cultural community, community is everything.

It is akin to safety, it is akin to where when things are not going right, you can go for support.

So, we created it without even having a name for it.

Folks would come to the Bakos and hang out with us here and hang out with the artists there just because they knew we were there.

You know, you don't have to call to make an appointment, making an appointment formalizes a process, but going to a community space opens the door.

So, there's a little nuance in there between feeling safe and wanted.

You know, we, I go into a room and I know that I'm not accepted, no one has to say, you can't come.

The room has a feel, room has a vibe.

In community spaces, you go in, you step into a Puerto Rican space, you step into a Nicaraguan space and you feel a sense of community regardless of whether you speak the language or you're from that culture.

So, it matters in how the work gets produced and it matters in how people mature over time.

You also have to have bright people around you, intelligent people, folks with vision and talent.

But in truth, and in fact, you also have to be curious and seek wisdom.

This nonprofit system has been around for a long time, and we are newcomers to the system.

And I've had many folks in the system who have been kind in pointing the way, you know?

There's a way, there's a way, you know, you say it in the, you repeat it because there is a way.

You have to read the instructions, you have to follow the instruction.

No one cares what you think, you have to follow the instruction.

And so, that has been my task in adding maturity to Diaspora Vibe Cultural Arts Incubator.

I took it on, and as a scientist, it was a challenge that I embraced primarily because no one talked about the archive piece, no one talked about the documentation piece, no one talked about making sure that when you meet an artist for a studio visit, that that is documented.

That each practice, each activity is important.

We have been doing that for 28 years, asking the questions about grandparents.

We have oral histories, we have digital histories of the time.

And so, a little bit of that, I accredit to my formal training.

But it's hard, it's hard.

And the system is not flexible.

You are a part of the system and you drive on that highway and take on all of the facets of the system as well.

The institutions, the museums have a particular role to play.

They are assigned or unassigned, the validating piece of an artist's career.

You have a solo in a museum, it is a validating action.

However, the community activists, the people doing work in the community that are aligned and assigned to the artists are the ones that bring the memory, right?

So, the museums wait for us to nurture and work and promote, and then they come in and snatch.

I will use the word snatch, snatch in a good way.

Snatch is not always bad.

And we want that to happen.

When we talk about, when I look at a CV of an artist and I say, let's see what's, let's diagnose this.

What's missing?

You haven't done any residences.

Have you gone here?

Have you had a studio visit?

Has a curator come?

Do you have a scholar writing on your work?

All of these things are things that the museums want, because when we do the work, when I send an artist to a museum for solo show, and that work has been done, that archive has been full, all they have to do now is put on lipstick.

The artist that I work with will tell you I'm very careful about mental health and health.

If you are a leader of an organization, you have to think about what care looks like.

And care means for me, time that is unassigned.

It's like you get an unrestricted grant.

When I ask for a grant to send artist to Suriname for a month, I'm not asking them to go to work.

I'm saying, how can a new country with multiple cultures inform and allow you to think differently in your practice?

How can you wake up with not an assignment, you know, assigned for the day?

What does that look like?

And that is a practice of care, that is a practice where most of the artists the first week don't know what to do.

They're completely uncomfortable with having unassigned time where they're not getting up to do work.

I see the change, I can make a case about impact.

And I know that when we teach that practice by doing, the artist is a better person for it, having gone through it.

I am genuinely, deeply concerned about my peers, which were few in the beginning.

When we had the recession, the recession that was named 2008, many of our arts organizations closed and never reopened.

There's a thing about closing that other artists will tell you, I resist closing.

When COVID came, we said, we're too small to stop.

We'll put on our mask, but we're gonna keep doing the work.

Our neighbors, our community needs this work.

So I am, I'm anxious, I am concerned.

What I think we have to do is pivot.

This powerful exhibition curated by none other than Rosie Gordon-Wallace.

Collaboration is not a noun, it is a verb.

And we have to collaborate from a, not a place of scarcity, but a place of abundance.

Collaboration has actions and it has consequences, and it has, it builds trust, and it means that your benefit may not happen at the same time.

That's true collaboration.

[Interviewer] If you could go back in time and give your younger self advice, what would you say to yourself?

I would say, be bolder.

I would say, be reckless.

I would say, be less respectful.

You know, we have been brought up to be, to cross your legs, sit up, be respectful, and it doesn't necessarily get you to where you wanna get to.

There is respect without being nervous and afraid.

I would also say that the work that you're embarking on is important work.

I didn't think it was important work, I just think it was work that was passion-driven.

I look back now and if I had defined it as important work, not only would I have continued to document it, I would've documented it in a different way.

I was catching the stories, putting them down, I was archiving because that's my practice.

But looking back, I could have done it in a different way.

And that's not a regret, it's something that I would do.

But what I would much rather do is look into the future.

The next chapter is embedded in succession.

The next chapter is walking away from fear of 30 years of work, meaning fear in passing it on, being able to leave the kitchen with a stove turned down and the pots on top of the stove.

That's where I am.

I am preparing, we have, thanks to the Mellon Foundation, we have been given support and for, and I have to say, Miami-Dade Department of Cultural Affairs, they have been our parents throughout this journey.

We could not have gotten this far.

But in terms of succession, having an executive director, Tanya Desdunes.

Having two dance provide catalyst fellows, being able to say to them, you take care of the archive, make sure it's digitized, make sure it gets to the right place.

I can't teach you everything, but there are fundamental administrative roads.

Having Gordon step forward and say, "I would like to lead, I'm not good at doing the admin," so we're gonna have to surround him with admin.

And embedding what legacy is, this is legacy work, it's my life, you know?

And, but I'm not afraid.

I'm not going to die at my desk.

I'm go die, but I'm not gonna die at my desk, even if I have to get up and then die.

I want to have a plan in place that has an endowment so that in the next 20, 30 years when my dopey comes back, Diaspora Vibe is running and thriving, and that artists have a place to come and do their work.

We cannot all close, we have to invest in the next generation.

And I'm hoping that the next generation can catch some of this passion that continues to curdle and churn inside of me, because the work is so worthy and the artists are so undervalued for what they bring to the stories and the joy that they bring to our lives.

We started the organization around our dining room table, and it's really been about family and it's really been about that there's always enough room, and even with limited resources, like we always find the time, the effort, to kind of make it happen.

I am so happy to see you all.

Just turn around and look at each other.

Just look, look at who is beside you, look at the feeling.

Can you feel the vibe in the room?

[Audience] Yes.

Can I get a round of applause for the vibe?

I'm at the very beginning of institution building, an opportunity at Mary University, with embedded in the library.

So, the physical space in the library.

The institutional economic conversations have just started, but my dream is to embed Diaspora Vibe Cultural Arts Incubator as an institute with probably immigration studies at the university so that we can co-program with the art department, with students that come from areas that we know.

I wanna have a big party in 2026 as I plan to step aside, it is a fact.

And if I'm alive, because you know, many of us didn't make it this year.

If I'm alive in 2026, I will have a different song to sing, but it'll be a gleeful song embedded in 30 years of joy.

[Narrator] Next, we head west to meet world renowned dancer, scholar, and choreographer, Halifu Osumare.

In this interview with KVIE public media for Northern California, the dancer reflects on power, knowledge, and the self-expression of dance.

Well, I think I kind of stumbled into dance.

It wasn't that I always felt like I was going to be a dancer.

As an African American, I love to dance to the latest social dance music, and would go to parties on Saturday nights as a teenager.

But it wasn't until I started taking modern dance in high school that I realized that dance could actually be a profession.

I had to get better technically and in all styles of dance, ballet, modern, Caribbean, and I started also studying African dance and the Dunham Technique.

[Narrator] With a career that spans over 40 years, Halifu Osumare is an internationally renowned dancer, choreographer, scholar and researcher whose work and contributions are noted as defining moments in dance history.

I think my dance career reflects my sense of independence and rebelliousness, because I actually left the United States as a young 21yearold in the late 60s and lived in Europe for three years, all on my own.

My mother thought I was crazy, but I, through dance, I was able to move through Spain, France, and then ended up in Scandinavia for a year in Copenhagen where I started one of the first modern dance companies, and then ending up also in Stockholm, Sweden, where I taught in one of the main ballet academies, jazz dance.

[Narrator] Halifu's world travels would set the tone as she returned to California with a broader portfolio of experiences, including dancing with the Rod Rodgers Dance Company, where she performed at some of the top venues in New York.

Please have your tickets ready.

Let me read 'em, then you leave.

Starting in four minutes, folks, please take your seats.

So, I had all of that wealth of experience, but I still felt like there was something missing.

And it was my self-funded trip to West Africa, particularly Ghana West Africa, in 1976, that kind of really solidified my path.

So, when you put the idea of how blackness has been perceived with the dancing body, you know, you're talking about layers of marginalization, but also layers of a kind of knowledge base that we are just beginning to understand.

The idea that I'm in search of a kind of truth about culture and society because I've experienced it in the act of dancing, that I am sharing knowledge.

And for me, that is a part of how African Americans in particular, have survived our experience here in the United States, is through the dance and the music as a survival tool.

I feel that dance is a synthesis between mind, body, and spirit.

And so, when I dance, I am sharing my deepest truth, my deepest knowledge base.

So, my first memoir, "Dancing in Blackness," published in 2018, and the current one, "Dancing the Afro-future" in 2024, I'm trying to look at my life as a microcosm in relationship to the larger macrocosm of the constantly shifting, churning, social political, and historical scene.

[Narrator] As Halifu looks back over her extensive career, her many books, her teachings as a professor, her work as a choreographer, she hopes that through the power or the language of dance, that she can give people a solid blueprint for the future.

I find that artists are in the vanguard of where we're going, you know, in terms of humanity and its development and evolution.

Artists are always, you know, like maybe one step ahead of everybody else, letting us see the possibilities of what we can grow into as human beings.

Dance has brought me to myself and who I am as a human being on this planet.

And so, for my limited time here, I feel like I have found my true self through dance, and I have been able to embody that wisdom.

[Narrator] Fountainhead Arts Residency program brings artists from around the globe to spend a month working in Miami.

Recently, the artist, Ato Ribeiro, brought his woodworking practice to the residency.

My practice is generally focusing on ways that I can celebrate how people of African descent have embedded language in textiles through different processes like West African strip weaving, Adinkra symbology, Kente cloth, and the similarities between West African strip weaving practices and African American quilting practices.

I have gravitated towards working with woods because they have a history of crossing borders and trade.

I do a lot of collecting, joining, and refining of these natural and repurposed materials until I've created a three-inch by three-inch extruded block that has a design that I've been reflecting on.

And then I slice them down into eighth of an inch tile-like forms that I can use for a larger wall hanging pieces to show the similarities between these different ways of communicating with textiles.

We're all made up of different pieces, you come together to make unique prints in a certain sense.

[Narrator] The RYTHM Foundation has been programming the Miami Beach Bandshell with the best of world music for years.

Recently, they welcomed Afro-Cuban legend, Jesus Aguaje Ramos and Buena Vista Orchestra.

Gracias, thank you.

[Narrator] Art Loft is on Instagram @artloftsfl.

Tag us on your art adventures, find full episodes, segments and more @artloftsfl.org and on YouTube at South Florida PBS.

Art Loft is brought to you by the Friends of South Florida PBS.