Miami MoCAAD started operationally in 2015 when it obtained a feasibility study from the Knight Foundation.

Their core mission is dedicated to the collection, the preservation and dissemination of art of the African diaspora.

We started knowing that we did not have a building and believed that technology could be used to enhance accessibility, but also we could leverage technology to present art in new, exciting and exhilarating ways.

We are in the lobby of the historic Black Archives Lyric Theater, and it has also provided gallery space for our traveling mural exhibition.

The Black Archives was founded by Dr. Dorothy Jenkins Fields to collect, preserve artifacts, history, photographs of Black Miami, which is really telling the story of Miami.

The Lyric is an iconic historic site that was a cornerstone of culture entertainment in Overtown back in the day when Overtown was a thriving business and cultural hub of Miami, and it was also known as the Black Harlem of Miami.

Our innovative spirit led us to place our murals in three places, in our website and now with our traveling mobile exhibition titled "Telling Overtown Stories, Saying Their Names."

Our curator, Donna Marie Baptist selected the artists.

Miami MoCAAD brings its view of what the theme should be.

We started this project with three murals, but we also incorporated QR codes as interactive technology that could bring the oral histories of Overtown to life.

They're not just paintings on a wall, they are paintings that speak.

They are paintings that say our names, the names of people who lived in Overtown, the names of people who preserved the history of Overtown.

This particular piece that I did was like something very special to me, because I live in this community and I always like seen this building.

A few of my friends' fathers are longshoremens.

A few of my friends who I grew up with are now longshoremens.

The longshoremens is people who are responsible for unloading cargo ships and bringing them into the city.

They also work for the cruise line too, where they take off luggage off of the cruise line.

80 something years ago like, nobody else wanted to do it.

A lot of African Americans and Bahamians like, would do these jobs.

And also they get paid a lot of money, but it's also dangerous.

Reginald talked with union members, he researched their photographs, he looked into their spirit and as a result, he was able to use his imagination to present their power, show us the underlying beauty and strength of longshoremen brotherhood.

There was that image of them inside of the Martin Luther King parade that they had, and they were all like walking together in unison.

I thought that that image in particular like, encompasses the unity that I kind of feel when I'm like, in their environment and the fact that all of them are like African American men and women.

It almost seemed like they're very, very militant, but they're just, you know, people of a lot of importance when it comes to the city.

Like, I come from Overtown and I know that our history and also our city and our belonging in this city is constantly being like, taken away from us.

I think that to try to honor and try to have some sort of like, preservation of our history was important to me.

I just know what they mean to our community and for me to get the opportunity to honor them was like, it's a dream come true.

It was easy to agree on a theme for the Lawson Thomas building.

Judge Lawson E. Thomas was Miami's first Black judge.

He was an ardent Civil Rights activist.

He participated as a lawyer and provided backup and leadership for the wade in that led to the opening of Virginia Key Beach as a segregated beach for Black people here in Miami.

It was up to the artists to use the inspiration from that history and from that knowledge and create a wonderful portrayal of intergenerational power, strength, hope, and struggle for the future.

When I made Overtown the Family Tree, the biggest thing that I thought about is what is a story that I want to tell after I'm gone, when it's like years and years later.

When people are walking past it, I want them to know what it's about.

And it's really the importance of understanding like, our family is important and then raising our children in order to know what is the next steps in order to make our our existence even better than it was or realizing how, you know, it was difficult and what can we do in order to change that.

What I hope people take away from this mural and all the murals in Overtown is the power of art.

The power of great art, meaningful art, colorful art and what it does to the community.

And when you take that, you have a paintbrush, you have a vision, and you have other people's intention and responsibility in your hands.

Like, then what do you do with that?

I believe that doing art like this in this area, the people that live in this area want to take care of it, and you see it every day.

When people came and engaged those QR codes, particularly at the Lawson E. Thomas building, it was an aha moment that we have this history that we didn't really know that much about.

And here, art and technology are bringing that history to us.

Miami MoCAAD wanted a soccer theme that would create an awareness of soccer players from the diaspora.

It was up to Stefan to use his imagination, use his artistic creativity, and present us with vibrant colors and bring us abstraction, merged with portraiture.

We had a couple meetings about what we thought we could do and the story came up about the Miami Edison Varsity soccer girls team and how they won the regional championships in South Florida.

And the more we started to talk about them, the more we came to realize that there were about five or six players on the team that were homeless.

So we really wanted to create something that was an honorarium to them.

As I started to divulge down the history of soccer in Overtown, there was one little Haiti soccer club that was the only prominent soccer club here in Overtown.

It really started a conversation for me as where does soccer come from and what does it mean to this community?

I chose Kylian Mbappe who plays for the French National team, and I chose Crystal Dunn who played for the American Women's National team.

I really wanted to segue the conversation we had before about the girl's varsity team and Miami Edison and create something that not only inspired them but spoke to their passion and dedication to the game.

He also allowed for placement of the soccer ball strategically because we wanted to make this mural, which is our newest mural, interactive in a different way.

And soccer lent itself to a game.

In art, if you're not engaging the technology aspect or the digital aspect of it, you're leaving a whole generation and a plethora of people to the wayside, and especially with the intent of paving the way for them to build on what we're doing.

I think it's truly incumbent on us as creatives to really start to think of how we're engaging the next generation.

I was so prideful that I was doing a mural in my community where my family grew up, where my dad was raised, and I've never felt the embrace of a community like this before.

I can't tell you how much pride I have in the artwork of the artists, their creative genius, and they are making true what our assumption was from the beginning, that there is enormous creative genius within the African diaspora, within the diaspora right here in Miami that justifies having Miami MoCAAD.