Artists Selected for the Third Cohort of the CCCADI Digital Evolution Artist Retention Fellowship
Cohort III features 28 talented artists whose disciplines range from visual and folk, to literary and performing arts.
NY, New York - December 10, 2021
Cohort III of the Caribbean Cultural African Diaspora Institute’s Digital Evolution Artist Retention (DEAR) intensive fellowship kicks off their participation with a virtual retreat taking place throughout December 2021. The retreat is a central part of the program which aims to tackle the challenges of the moment by exploring a range of tools and practices that cut across disciplines and levels of experience to further strengthen artists’ ability to create, teach, and promote their work in our present context and beyond. Throughout the retreat artists will engage in master workshops that cover Artist/Project Narrative Development, Social Media and Digital Strategy, Grant Writing, Intellectual Property Rights, and Virtual Presenting.
The DEAR Fellowship was created during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic to provide resources and an opportunity for artists, primarily of African descent, to learn, plan, network and grow in order to create sustainable practices. Now, nearly two years after the start of this health crisis, artists are still trying to recover and the need for supportive spaces continues to be present.
This group of 28 talented artists represent the full spectrum of artistic disciplines and bring a unique set of experiences to this cohort. Some members have had existing relationships with CCCADI for years, while others are joining the community for the first time. Many are tuning in from various regions of the country. Yet, they share a common thread: the tremendous loss they’ve endured during the pandemic.
As artists, some suffered the loss of studio spaces after the nonprofits that housed them collapsed and the loss of income from contracts and in-person opportunities that they’re still trying to recover. Others suffered the loss of creativity, inspiration and communal connection. Now, in support of their resilience and artistic practice, as they make their way through the DEAR Fellowship program and become CCCADI alumni, they’ll each unlock ongoing access to a network of peers, resources and opportunities.
Congratulations to the artists of DEAR Cohort III, all of whom encapsulate the richness of the African Diaspora through their representation of a diverse set of cultures such as Haitian, Puerto Rican, Trinidadian, Dominican, Bajan, Afro-Indigenous, Cuban, Jamaican, African American and Mexican, to name a few!
Participating Artists:
Pictured L-R
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Visual Arts
Michael Paul Britto’s interdisciplinary practice spans a broad scope of mediums from videos to digital photography, sculpture, collage, and performance. He has a BA from the City College, NY. His past residencies include: The New Museum, Smack Mellon, The Marie Walsh Sharpe Foundation and LMCC. He has exhibited at El Museo del Barrio, The Studio Museum of Harlem, and The Kitchen in (NY) as well as internationally at The Zacheta National Gallery (Warsaw), and the Victoria and Albert Museum (London). Britto has been written about in The New York Times, Art In America and The Brooklyn Rail. He is also a teaching artist and the co-founder of the “Young Men Of Color” film/video training program at Downtown Community Television in New York City.
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Visual Arts
Raised in Brooklyn, New York, Allegra Earle is a writer and filmmaker who works in both documentary and narrative cinema.
Having studied Film Production and Business Marketing at Brooklyn College, Allegra has gone on to work on productions for Michael Moore, National Geographic, and Netflix.
Her passion is writing and creating worlds, portraying experiences on screen, and representing the power of perspective and imagination through storytelling.
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Visual Arts
Amberly Alene is a documentary filmmaker, photographer and writer born in Baltimore, living in Havana, Cuba. Her work examines issues of Blackness, identity, ancestral healing practices, womxn's rights, health, environmental policy, and social justice within Latin America and the Caribbean. She is a graduate of the University of Maryland's School of Communications and holds an MFA in Film from American University. She was the recipient of a 2014 Tinker Grant to research cinema and social policy in Cuba at ICAIC, the Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry. In 2014 she directed Bullets Without Names, a documentary centered on gun violence, recovery and post traumatic stress disorder among black male survivors of gunshot trauma. The film was nominated for Best Documentary at the American Vision's Awards. In 2016 she was awarded a Ruby Artist Grant from the Baltimore Cultural Alliance. Her 2017 her poem “Black” dedicated to Afro Colombian activist, Francia Márquez Mina has screened internationally and was featured at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC.
Her documentary, Hermanas en Ruedas (Sisters on Wheels) premiered in Havana, Cuba on January of 2017. Hermanas in Ruedas follows the stories of young women in the underground skateboard culture in Havana. The film won 'Most Inspirational' at the 2017 First Up TV Festival in Oakland, CA. Her photo series ‘Havana in Squares’ premiered on exhibition at the Motorhouse Gallery in Baltimore in fall of 2018. In summer of 2018, she curated her first installation, "Eyes, Voice, Memory", a youth digital storytelling project that premiered at the Light Box in Miami, FL. In 2018 she became a co-founder of ReglaSOUL, a community initiative to provide holistic wellness resources to improve the health and well-being of the Afro descendant population in the borough of Regla in Havana, Cuba. In 2019 she worked in collaboration with several award-winning Afro Cuban Havana-based artists to direct a series of music videos, two of which include “Derrechos de Admisión” and “El Corazón de Ñame” to raise awareness around issues of race, social inequity and gender violence. In 2021, her documentary photography work in the community of Regla was selected for exhibition at The Clemente
Soto Vélezama Cultural & Educational Center in New York.
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Visual, Performing, Folk & Traditional Arts
Recognized by the New York Times for her “…silk-infused vocals…” songwriter, vocalist, and Brooklyn, NY native, Amma Whatt, has a unique musical and storytelling talent that has taken her all over the globe.
When asked where her inspiration comes from, Amma harkens back to her experiences born into a musical family that immersed her in various African and Black American cultures. She was destined to become an artist with a universal appeal as she learned Afro-Cuban Orisha chants and music, and Sene-Gambian dance from her parents, who toured the world, performing professionally throughout her childhood.
All of that experience culminated into her show “Ancestral Pact,” commissioned for the Apollo Music Café in 2018. Amma gathered her experience as student of all diasporic musical styles, jazz, soul, and hip-hop to curate this music and dance presentation with a 9-piece band, and she displayed how all these genres of Black music interact- for a sold out crowd.
Amma is a Harlem Stage Fund for New Work grant recipient and is currently back on stages touring with drummer/bandleader, Nate Smith as they promote the newly released album “Kinfolk 2: See the Birds.” which features Amma’s prolific singing and songwriting, most notably on “Don’t Let Me Get Away”-written by Amma- and sung by Stokley Williams of Mint Condition fame. You can also hear more of her vocals and writing on Nate’s Grammy nominated album “Kinfolk: Postcards from Everywhere”
The American Idol Hollywood finalist honed her vocal skills at the prestigious Howard University, and released her critically acclaimed debut E.P. “Maybe” in 2012. While earning her songwriting chops as a staff writer with the Grammy-nominated songwriting team, Big Drawz Music, Amma co-wrote “Just the Way You Are” for Kindred The Family Soul, and has had music placed in several TV shows. TV viewers then continued to enjoy Amma as the singer of HomeGoods’ long-running “Get Happy” campaign.
Other highlights in her career include guesting as a lead vocalist/co-composer for improvisational funk band, Vinx and the Groove Heroes, lead by genre-bending impresario, Vinx. And, never staying in one musical lane for too long, Amma has released charting songs with the top producers in Afro-House music around the world like Zepherin Saint, Carols Mena, and Ian Friday. Other tours, collaborations, and notable performance spaces include: the Black Rock Coalition, under the musical-direction of Tamar-Kali, The Kennedy Center Jazz Cafe with Nate Smith & Kinfolk (Washington, DC), The Blue Note (NYC), Chateau Vallon (Toulon, France), BRIC Jazz Festival, Winter Jazz Festival, opening for and performing with Common, Tweet, Meshell Ndegeocello, Jose Milan, Strivers Row, Chante Cann, Eric Roberson, Gordon Chambers, Glenn Lewis and more. Amma's recent writing endeavors have put her in the studio to record with Gretchen Parlato, Blitz the Ambassador, Mark De Clive Lowe, and Bilal.
Amma’s current music is a modern-pop fusion of Soul, Afro-Caribbean styles, House, and Jazz, and features lyrical storytelling reflecting love, pain, and hope. You may also have seen one of her many viral, acapella videos dedicated to the religious music of Orisha worshippers worldwide.
As she continues to write, sing, vocal produce and tour, while raising two children with her husband in New York, Amma is attune to global causes for social justice, and serves as a board member for Egbe Iwa Rites of Passage program. Through her volunteer work and musical message, Amma constantly seeks to use her voice as a tool for advocacy and allyship.
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Performing Arts
Drummer & MC April King has been on the global scene with wild electronic gear, fierce pocket & elevated lyrics for nearly two decades. Afrofuturistic soundscapes rooted in hip hop, jazz, funk, house and future soul are the signature of King’s hypnotic beats. Recently diving into DJing & performance with Ableton in her live show, King can add being one of the first artists to ever rap while DJing & playing the Zoom Arq to her historic role as one of the world’s first artists to drum & rap since 2001.
King has been the drummer for groups & artists like Klymaxx, Adaawe, The Luminaries, Donn T & Jazz Mafia. She has performed with Tony Allen (Fela Kuti), Cheick Tidiaine Seck, Julien Lourau, Sambou Kouyate (Youssou N’Dour), Hervè Samb, Keziah Jones, Opio & The Architect (Souls of Mischief) & many others. From being the house drummer for The Roots’ event “Black Lily” in Paris & LA, holding down the beat at Debbie Allen Dance Academy or performing for the Royal Family of Kuwait- King’s beats and rhymes take her around the world.
As an artist she has played live at Radio Nova’s Nuits Zebrees (Paris, France), the RAJ Festival, Agape International Spiritual Center, UCSB, UC Berkeley, CIIS, opened for Me’Shell Ndegeoncello, Saul Williams, Medusa, Slum Village, KRS-ONE & more. Her releases with Top Rocking have been featured on Gilles Peterson’s Eclectic Sessions Vol.2 and her genre bending track “The Real OGs” with DJ iTomLab has gotten over 16k hits. In 2020 she released 2 instrumental albums: “Ohmtronica Vol. I” & “Ohmtronica Vol. II.” She is currently finishing her first solo album, “Life in 5D” featuring production by The Architect (Souls of Mischief/ Planet Asia), Tra’Zae (Parliament Funkadelic), So- So Topic (Alpha Pup Records)+ surprise guests! The audio-visual single “Hit Me On The Astral“ is slated for a late 2021 release. Stay Tuned on all platforms @aprilkingtv
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Literary, Performing, Folk & Traditional Arts
Ayinde Jean-Baptiste is a Sanba, a Kreyol appellation which encompasses poet/griot/keeper
of memory. Born on Umoja of a hard, demanding love, he was raised in Chicago and Evanston, IL in an extended family of blood and political relations. He has shared truth & troth in hundreds of settings, including churches, schools, community centers, group homes, youth prisons, universities, museums, stadiums, kitchen tables, the halls of government and the streets.
A veteran of electoral and issue campaigns beginning in 2001 with his father’s first campaign for elective office in Evanston, IL, Ayinde has organized locally and nationally against the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, against the occupation of Haiti, on the issue of immigration, and in the fight for reparations for slavery.
In Chicago he worked with the Industrial Areas Foundation to launch PACT, their first
broad-based organization by and for young adults and served on the founding board of the Haitian Congress to Fortify Haiti. Through his work with these organizations, Ayinde helped extend the age limit for dependent Health Care coverage in Illinois for veterans, and Haiti’s legislature amended the nation’s Constitution to grant dual citizenship to Haitians who have naturalized abroad and their children.
In 2012, he transitioned into multimedia storytelling, first as a Contributing Editor at The
Haitian Times, and returning to the microphone from 2013 until 2016 with DrumLanguage, a podcapsule exploration of the African Diasporic experience through contemporary music, commentary, and archival sound. In recent years he and his work have been featured on WNYC, WBAI, WVON and WBEZ, and he has been awarded research and arts grants from the Black Metropolis Research Consortium and the City of Evanston. He continues to explore the transformative potential of Black sound and orality by engaging with communities of listening, movement, memory-making and archiving.
As an independent producer/strategist/consultant, his recent client-collaborators include
The Westside Justice Center, UMedics, Allied Media Projects, The DuSable Heritage Association,Raymond Whittaker Design & Joy Strategies.
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Performing, Folk & Traditional Arts
BELINDA A. SÁENZ is an interdisciplinary performer, choreographer, and instructional specialist who collaborates as a teaching artist with Lincoln Center Education, Disney Theatrical Group, New York City Center and TADA! Youth Theatre. Belinda performs with Canady Foundation for the Arts Repertory Theatre. Past collaborations include Bessie-Award-Winning Joya Powell’s Movement of the People Dance Company, Callaloo Kids, MJM Dance, El Paso Opera, etc. She has performed at Lincoln Center, Radio City Music Hall, The Kennedy Center, Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, Davis Hall, Queens Theatre, among many others. Her most recent choreographic work, The US in USA, was presented at the Frederick Loewe Theatre in April 2017. From the El Paso, TX - Juárez, Mex border area, Belinda is currently a student of the Education Doctorate in Leadership and Innovation at ASU’s Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College.
She holds a Master of Arts in Dance Education from NYU with a specialization in Teaching Dance in Higher Education and the Professions (Institute Honors as recipient of The Western Scholarship), Master of Education in Bilingual Education & Bachelor of Fine Arts in Music Theatre/Dance (Magna Cum Laude and University Honors Certificate) from The University of Texas at El Paso. Besides the USA, she has studied, taught, and/or performed in Mexico, England, and Eastern-Central Europe. Ms. Saenz served as an adjunct professor at NYU Steinhardt’s Dance Education program for 3 years. She is an active member of the UNESCO International Dance Council, American Guild of Musical Artists, National Dance Education Organization, and New York State Dance Education Association.
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Performing Arts
Camille Simone Thomas is still looking for a concise way to define the identities that matter most to her.
She’s a fifth-generation native Detroiter
A fourth-generation Black college graduate
A third-generation way maker
A second generation oldest daughter of an oldest daughter
And a half first-generation Jamaican - American
Maybe one day she’ll have a neater way to say that but, being messy also defines who she is. Camille is a creative actor, writer, deviser, and sometimes producer who believes it is her duty and her honor to tell the stories of all the various generations contained inside of her.
Her one-woman show “yOU CaN TAke ouT a PArEnT pLUS lOaN” has been performed/developed with The Red Curtain International Good The@Tre Festival (Best Script winner), The National Women’s Theatre Festival ( Jury Selection for Best Performance winner), American Slavery Project as part of their women’s month series, and with BlackBoard Play Reading Series.
She has performed recently in “Who's There” at the off-off Broadway New Ohio Theatre, the National Women’s Theatre Festivals’ virtual production of Electra, and The Detroit Public Theatre’s virtual performance of “The Break”.
She has recently worked at Manhattan Theatre Club with their Stargate program helping court-involved young men devise an original Off-Broadway Theatre piece.
Currently, Camille is working as a teaching artist with Dreamyard and will soon begin raising funds for her original web series.
Feel free to follow her journey on Instagram @Camille4Reel or on her website www.Camillesthomas.com
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Visual Arts
Chris Clark is a self-taught visual artist, illustrator, and muralist living and working in Jacksonville, FL. Art, to him, is a form of journalism. Using acrylic, oil, ink, and spray paint, he explores the rich culture and history of the Black community across the diaspora and the social issues affecting them today. For Clark, reflecting the human figure is very powerful, which is why he uses graphic-style portraiture and figurative works to depict Black life in America through his personal lens of a Black man, husband, and father. At the core of his work is the notion that representation matters. As the artist explains, “By telling my story, I want to help the viewer rediscover theirs.”
Clark’s artwork has been shown in exhibitions around the U.S. and abroad, including “21 Piece Salute: A Salute to the Ancestors Who Lost Their Lives in the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre” at the Black Wall Street Gallery in New York, NY, and “Through Our Eyes: Journey To South Africa” at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Art Museum in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. He has received multiple grants and was chosen to participate in the House of Sedulo Artist Residency in London, UK and the Chateau Orquevaux Artist Residency in Champagne-Ardenne, France in 2022.
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Visual, Literary & Performing Arts
Clarivel Ruiz (we, us, you) child of the African and Indigenous Diaspora, parents from Ayiti Kiskeya (aka Hispaniola, aka the Dominican Republic and Haiti), raised in NYC on the ancestral bones and covered shrines of the Lenape people. In 2018 we initiated Dominicans Love Haitians Movement, Inc., an art-based nonprofit organization.
Our goal is to restore the rights OF ALL PEOPLE, HAITIAN AND DOMINICAN, to live in an inclusive environment free from harmful negative narratives, perceptions, and propaganda that negate our commonalities and humanity through antiblackness, anti-Haitianism, and xenophobia. Our purpose is to give rise to ways to counteract these divisive ways of thinking.
Simultaneously, as an Artist, Educator, and Coach with over fifteen years of experience creating media programs for an afterschool media nonprofit agency, teaching students at a college level, and guiding people to live a life they love is to support empowering people through participatory engagements.
We are alumni of Hemispheric Institute's EmergeNYC, Culture Push's Utopian Fellow, a Civic Practice Seminar participant at the Metropolitan Museum, The Innovative Cultural Advocacy Fellowship at CCCADI, a Brooklyn Arts Council award and Unicorn Fund recipient through New Media Democracy. Clarivel is an MFA graduate of CUNY, City College.
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Performing, Visual & Literary Arts
Dani Darling is an imaginative chanteuse, guitarist, producer, band leader and songwriter from Ann Arbor, MI. She was the Detroit Metro Times "Artist to Watch in 2020", the recipient of the Amplify Project Fellowship, and has been featured on Live in the D, Audiofemme, The Singer's Room, and Nylon Magazine. Her most recent release, a Psychedelic Soul EP called "The Future" saw Darling on the Cover of the Detroit Metro Times, and rotating on local radio stations. Dani is ascending as one of Michigan's very brightest stars. She performs with her five piece band, and has performed all over the world from Rome, to Paris, New York, and Edinburgh.
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Literary Arts
Darriel McBride is a writer, poet, and activist from the South Bronx, New York. She graduated from Marist College in 2017 with a Bachelors in English Writing and a Minor in Video Production. She is a U.S Fulbright Alumni, Gates Millennium Scholar, John Lewis Fellowship Alumni, and a previous participant in the NBCUniversal Page Program. Darriel’s poetry has been featured in the Bronx Native Writer’s Anthology Vol. 1 and Vol.2, Into the Void, LUNA Magazine, We Are Antifa, Sad Girls Club Literary Blog, the Bronx Memoir Project Anthology Vol V, and the Black Superwoman Chronicles. During her Fulbright Fellowship, she taught poetry and creative writing to South African students. In 2020, she was selected to attend the Frost Place Conference on Poetry: an intensive poetry camp with writers who are deeply committed to learning more about the craft of poetry.
She recently self-published her first poetry book titled "The Ghetto Youth Handbook." Outside of poetry, Darriel is an absolute travel junkie who enjoys vibing under the sign and studying astrology.
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Visual Arts
I am an artist and graphic designer whose medium typically consists of digital art using the Art Studio iPhone app as well as the Studio photo editing app. I create art because I strive to connect with the world around me through a visual medium. When I share this art with others, it gives me the utmost gratification. Music, Pop art, impressionism, and Haitian art and expressionism in particular exude the allure, complexity, grittiness, and imagery that I strive to capture in my various pieces. For this reason I utilize these styles in my approach to visual art in order to produce primitive yet colorful and conceptually rich drawings with subtle nods to Haitian culture and history as well as mysticism and pop culture. I intend for these works and designs to honor my personal influences such as Jean-Michel Basquiat, Francis Bacon, Kerry James Marshall and most recently, Frantz Zephirin.
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Performing, Folk & Traditional Arts
Elvira Clayton is a visual, performance artist and archival activist. She grew up in Houston, Texas. She currently lives and works in Harlem, N.Y. Elvira’s practice explores matriarchal lineage, personal, historical, and suppressed historical memory. She is currently focused on a series of research-based work that uses
slave-era textiles and handcraft techniques to tell stories that address American Slavery. Clayton’s work has been exhibited through the U.S. Her work has been featured in Killens Review, Glasstire, Callaloo Journal, and Artsy.net. Elvira is a Laundromat Project Commissions Artist alumnus, a four-time recipient of the Manhattan Community Arts Fund Grant. She has been an artist in residency at The Anderson Center For Interdisciplinary Studies, Blue Mountain Center and most recently was awarded a 2021 NYC-based Residency Unlimited residency.
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Visual Arts
Fan Lee Warren is a contemporary African American artist who lives and works in Oakland, CA. Born in Birmingham, AL, and raised in Chicago, Warren's work pays homage to historical memories such as the black migration and her elders' wisdom. She has been a community culture activist and exhibiting artist for over three decades. In addition to private collections, her work is in several public collections, such as the New Harold Washington Library Center in Chicago and the Alameda County Art Commission. She has received numerous grants, awards, and art commissions, including a Western States Arts Federation/National Endowment for the Arts.
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Visual Arts
Ghislaine Sabiti is an interdisciplinary French/American Congolese-born artist, a painter, costume designer, and teaching artist who was raised on the outskirts of Paris, France and is now based in New York. She studied fine art at Atelier Chantier du Coq and graduated with honors in fashion design from Atelier Chardon Savard in Paris, France. She studies glass lamp-work and photo decals at Urban Glass. She highlights the technical form used in both African and European arts, which stresses form and color. Sabiti completed a fellowship at the Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute Cycle VIII of the Spring ICA, and New York foundation of the Arts Immigrant Artist Program.
Ghislaine is nominated by Chashama for an artist residency at the Marcel Breuer House Pocantico Center/Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Jamaica Center and Learning, Urban glass, Chashama and Commission for the Lexington Hotel, New York, Salon du Prêt-à-Porter. Sabiti was also an award winner for the Dupont De Nemours hosiery design competition for DIM Company. Her work has been exhibited and commissioned nationally and internationally in France and the U.S. in numerous group exhibitions and solo shows including galleries and museum such as El Teatro del Museo Del Barrio, Occupy Museum Debt Fair at the Whitney Biennial, Atelier Rosal, Westfield State University Arno Maris Gallery, Rio Gallery, shapeshifterlab, Harlem School of the Arts, Brooklyn Film and Art Festival and Small Space Fest, and Poe Park Visitor Center.
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Visual Arts
Jasmine Murrell is a Brooklyn-based interdisciplinary visual artist who employs several different mediums to create sculptures, installations, photography, performance, land art and films that blur the line between history and mythology. Raised in Detroit during its heyday as a black utopia set Murrell on the path of exploring the African diaspora and ancient craft techniques of bringing life to mundane, seemly dead material. Juxtaposing American artifacts with the products of other knowledge systems, Murrell troubles the historical record to reveal other truths and other narratives.
She has exhibited nationally and internationally, in venues such as the Museum of Contemporary Art; the Bronx Museum; the Museum Contemporary Art Chicago; the Whitney Museum, the African-American Museum of Art, and the International Museum of Photography. Murrell has been a resident artist at the Bronx Museum AIM program; Baxter St. Gallery workspace; BRIClab contemporary art residency and Block Gallery workspace. Her work has been included in the book MFON: Women Photographers of the African Diaspora, and The New York Times, Time Magazine, Hyperallergic, The Detroit Times and several other publications.
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Visual Arts, Folk & Traditional Arts
Keena Azania Romano exercises her creative mind through the exploration of diverse artistic mediums as a way to engage and understand individual and collective purpose. Romano received her BFA from Pomona College then returned to her native Bay Area to pursue a career in the Arts. Her Murals can be spotted from Sacramento, California, to Richmond, Virginia to Oaxaca, Mexico.
Inspired by cultural practices, Romano combines spirituality with urban experience to produce work that draws upon the quest for a greater understanding of intersectional beauty in this world. She fuses traditional native arts with contemporary inner-city techniques to reflect a new language that encourages the healing and empowerment process between community members and their environments. Her style is described as “vibrant and insightful”.
She aspires to travel and create a colorful trail of art by exploring the modern Diaspora based on her multi-ethnic experience.
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Visual & Literary Arts
A writer, vocalist and performance/sound artist, LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs is the author of TwERK (Belladonna, 2013). Diggs has presented and performed at California Institute of the Arts, El Museo del Barrio, The Museum of Modern Art, and Walker Art Center and at festivals including: Explore the North Festival, Leeuwarden, Netherlands; Hekayeh Festival, Abu Dhabi; International Poetry Festival of Copenhagen; Ocean Space, Venice; International Poetry Festival of Romania; Question of Will, Slovakia; Poesiefestival, Berlin; and the 2015 Venice Biennale. As an independent curator, artistic director, and producer, Diggs has presented events for BAMCafé, Black Rock Coalition, El Museo del Barrio, Lincoln Center Out of Doors, and the David Rubenstein Atrium. Diggs has received a 2020 C.D. Wright Award for Poetry from the Foundation of Contemporary Art, a Whiting Award (2016) and a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship (2015), as well as grants and fellowships from Cave Canem, Creative Capital, New York Foundation for the Arts, and the U.S.-Japan Friendship Commission, among others.
She lives in Harlem and teaches part-time at Brooklyn College and Stetson University.
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Performing, Visual, Folk & Literary Arts
Leilani Banday is a Tongva Territory born and raised artist and writer. As a Wombyn of color she explores various aspects of the human experience through her art and writing. From these expressions and experiences, Leilani has found both passion and purpose in reintroducing divine awareness into her own life and as well as in the lives of others.
Through spoken word, art and Wombyns’ workshops Leilani is able to share this intention, in hopes that this will instill Divine Understanding/ Awareness in the hearts, minds and spirits of those around her. As part of an artist’s collective called, A Stage of Our Own, Leilani has recently performed her spoken word /installation piece “Earth Mother: A Letter to My Daughter” in their 2018 show:UNITY. Also performing this for both the ILWU Women’s Local 13 and Urban X Indigenous IV : Unite the Tribes, Earth Mother is a piece that personifies the earth into human form and speaks to what she would say to a daughter during life’s trials. Here, Mother Earth is speaking life back into her child and reminding her of her righteousness. Recently, Leilani has also created a booklet of poetry which infuses her artistic expressions with poems surrounding Divine Femininity; intending to ignite Wombyn and magnify their power within. It is Leilani’s mission to share her works and facilitate healing within others by giving them the tools to recognize and maintain the understanding of their own magnitude.
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Performing Arts
Mary Chang was born in Manhattan and raised in the Fort Greene section of Brooklyn, where she currently lives. She attended the School of Visual Arts and has worked with Master printers Sheila Marbain and Shelia Goloborotko.
There was a pause in her work as a painter from the mid-1970s to the late-1990s while she raised her family and focused on another passion of hers, the theater, studying in New York with acting coach/mentor, Anthony Abeson; acting coaches Ada Brown Mather and Carol Rosenfeld of HB Studios; Linklater coach Bobby Troka; and at The Barrow Group.
Her theater and film experience now includes La Mama Experimental Theater in New York as part of the technical crew on Fragments of a Greek Trilogy, directed by Andrei Serban (toured in Italy); an ensemble group of four American actors and four Swiss actors who developed and co-wrote the play Ter-View which toured in New York and Switzerland, directed by Walter Riedweg of the Werktheater of Basel Switzerland; the Immigrant’s Theater Project, directed by Marcy Arlin, where she co-wrote the play Immigration Office, an ensemble which performed throughout New York; Manhattan by Numbers shown at New Directors Film Festival (MoMA/Lincoln Center), the first American film by the director Amir Naderi; Dos Worlds and Ophelia Continuum, written and directed by Maya Milenovic Workman (2018-2019); and Shen Tak, a short film honoring her father, collaborating with filmmaker, composer, writer, and director Rane Parish. In April 2019, Mary directed her first staged reading of the play Paging Doctor Faustus at Five Myles Gallery, Brooklyn. Mary recently completed filming ( 2021) ; Ophelia Continuum directed by Maya Milenovic in collaboration with Reggie Workman.
Mary returned to painting in 1999, invited by friend and mentor Onnie Millar to be part of the exhibition “The Tree” at The Skylight Gallery in New York. Here she exhibited “Doors,” a series of three-hundred-year-old doors that had been scraped, pulling back layers of paint while leaving residue from the past, creating a conversation with the remaining layers of paint and markings from years gone by. Her work has been exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts (MoCADA), Robert Lehman Gallery at Urban Glass, as well as various galleries and cultural centers throughout the New York tri-state area, Massachusetts, and Brazil. She is also one of thirteen artists selected to create Goloborotko’s 20th Anniversary Edition Portfolio in 2009, as part of the permanent collection of the Pinacoteca de Sao Paulo Museu SP, Pinacoteca do Estado Museu de São Paulo de Arte Contemporânea.
Mary recently exhibited in “A New York State of Mind: Stories From The Unusual Suspects,” curated by Elise Tak at De Cacaofabriek in The Netherlands September 2018, introducing fourteen independent American artists from the United States and their unique stories.
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Performing & Visual Arts
Considered a pioneer in the Pittsburgh dance scene, Nick M. Daniels is the founding Artistic Director of the D.A.N.A. Movement Ensemble (Dancers Against Normal Actions) which he started in 1991. With over 30 years of dance and choreography experience, he has reemerged after a 20+year hiatus. Since returning in 2016 his choreographic style continuously has developed. His style is based on butoh, African, modern and contemporary styles based on pure raw emotion. His creativity often entices the use of soundscapes and video imagery.
His dancing career began at a young age, as a student in McKeesport High School where he began developing and perfecting various styles of dance. The now Pittsburgh resident has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Dance from Slippery Rock University and started the DANA Movement Ensemble prior to graduation. Along with his Company he has received many awards, accolades and favorable reviews from across the country.
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Performing, Visual, Folk & Traditional Arts
Puerto Rican native Rafael Maya Álvarez is the founder and director of the afro-caribbean group, Desde Cero, as well as the founder and co-director of the international Education Project known as “Proyecto Unión”. He has participated in various Bomba (Afro Puerto Rican genre) groups throughout his career. Currently, Rafael is teaching in conjunction with the project “Gigantes de la Bomba” offering multiple weekly classes in the Plaza de Recreo of Carolina and to schools in the Municipality of Carolina. He also provides bilingual Bomba workshops for the exchange student program at the University of Puerto Rico’s Río Piedras campus, and is currently heading classes at Universidad del Este (U.N.E. University) in Carolina as a lead Bomba Instructor. Rafael has held instructor positions in numerous programs and has traveled worldwide for his work. For several years Rafael Maya was one of the dance and percussion instructors for the “Corporación Piñones Se Integra” in Loiza and also for the Arthur Murray Dance Studio in Santurce. Throughout Rafael’s music career, he has given master classes in several areas including, but not limited to: percussion, history, dance and singing. His teaching locations at the University level include the University of California (Berkley), University of Florida, University of Colorado (Boulder) and University of Miami, to name a few. In 2013, he was honored to receive an invitation to teach a master class in Berkley College of Music new campus in Valencia, Spain, where he spent 1 week as an instructor for a graduate level course providing lectures and recording music. By far, the most important element of Rafael's work is cultural education. His dedication is clearly demonstrated by his recent travels to numerous countries providing lectures and performing. These types of projects and experiences continue to be his main focus.
As part of his passionate vision of continuing to expose and represent the culture in its different facets, Rafael has recorded music and video for the number one Xbox-One, Xbox360, and Wii fitness game, Zumba: World Fitness Party. He currently is working in Restauración Cultural’s Cultural Center, his organization’s new facility, to help spread the Bomba genre. He, alongside Restauración Cultural, has released the first instructional Bomba DVD’s which have been a hit amongst Bomba enthusiasts. For quite some time, Rafael has worked as a studio musician, recording various albums from around the world. His latest album, titled “Semilla de Identidad” by Desde Cero, has already hit the streets, and these days Rafael is diligently working on the 2nd production of it. Stay tuned…Rafael will be debuting his first educational book in the near future.
Groups and programs participated in: La Liga Rumbera(Percussion, Vocals), Bambulex (Percussion, Vocals), Henry Cole y Su Villa Locura(Percussion), ÌFÉ (Percussion and Vocals), Majestad Negra (Percussion, Vocals and Coreographer), Compañía Folklórica De Loiza (Percussion and Vocals), Restauración Cultural (Co-Director, Percussion, Vocals), Zona De Bomba (Percussion and Dance), Tambuyé (Percussion, Dance, and Vocals), Tendencias (Co-Director, Percussion, Dance, and Vocals), Carabalí (Percussion and Vocals), Sabor a Bomba (Percussion and Vocals), Fiesta Bombera (Percussion and Vocals), Son de Plena (Percussion and Vocals) and Bomba Tour (Percussion and Vocals) “Vida Plena”, “Head Start,” “Upward Bound”, “Taller Fotoperiodismo”, various programs of the "Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña”, “Program of continued education”, “Early Start” and “Bomba de Oro”.
www.desdecero.org
www.bombapr.com
www.facebook.com/desdecero.org
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Visual Arts
Rafaela Gomez Luna (Rafaela Luna) was born in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, a United Stated based painter, illustrator and printmaker.
Luna graduated from La Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes, The Autonomous University
of Santo Domingo, and attended City College in NYC. Her artwork explores the
connection between the social environment and the human body as an object of
Stereotype. Luna’s artwork explores the human perception. What divides peoples and creates a negative image based on characteristics of race, ethnicity, gender or simply physical appearance. She seeks to examine stereotypes through its images allowing the viewer awareness of both self-perception and the roots of stereotypes in a social setting.
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Visual, Folk & Traditional Arts
Régine Romain is the proud descendant of Haitian revolutionaries and brings tremendous joy to her life/work as an artist, educator, visual anthropologist, and racial justice + equity coach living in Brooklyn, NY. With 20+ years of teaching, training, and supporting diverse communities, she promotes love, freedom, understanding and respect in addressing issues of race, religion/spirituality, and representation through participatory and reflective learning practices. Through an extensive global network, she produces culturally transformative curricula, workshops, salons, performances, forums, exhibits/festivals, and tours. While living in Benin, West Africa (2016-2018), Régine became the founder/director of the WaWaWa Diaspora Centre, a 501c3 organization - to actively heal historic wounds and trauma related to the TransAtlantic Slave Trade through inter-generational arts, education, exchange programs and media production.
As a storyteller and cultural producer, she uses photographs/film/performance as mixed-media tools to ignite critical consciousness and radical transformation. Régine is the director/executive producer of the award-winning short film and podcast “Brooklyn to Benin: A Vodou Pilgrimage” (2016) and “Vodou Roots: A Love Story Musical” (2018). She also served as the creative doula for two short films made in Benin (2017) “African Odyssey: Ancestral Memories” and “The Clotilde: A Poetic Voyage.”
Régine’s photographic work on Black spirituality appears in “MFON: Women Photographers of the African Diaspora” (2017). She is a co-author and featured artist in “Ritual as Remembrance,” a Photoville lesson plan for 5th- 12 graders based on the MFON project “Altar:Prayer, Ritual, Offerings” exhibited at Photoville from September 13-23, 2018 in Brooklyn Bridge Park.
As the Director of Education at MoCADA, Régine edited "Diaspora Diaries: An Educator's Guide to MoCADA Artists” (2009). 2020, she authored "Nou Pap Bliye: A Haitian Coloring Book" to commemorate the tragic 2010 earthquake in Haiti. Régine received a BS in International Studies from Bowie State University, studied Documentary Filmmaking (MFA) at Howard University, and completed her MA in Photography and Urban Culture from Goldsmiths, University of London.
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Folk & Traditional Arts
Visual Arts instructor who is a 3rd generation carnival costume designer of the artistic Morris family of Belmont, Trinidad & Tobago, West Indies. She was trained by the late metal master, costume designer & innovator Ken Morris, considered to be one of Trinidad’s national treasures. Ms. Bell also has a BA in Art Administration, from New York University and certificates in film & video production.
I believe in the marriage of art, social consciousness & connection with my audience. This marriage was developed in my upbringing with my artistic family in Trinidad & Tobago. The mixture of artist & art administrating is something I witnessed in my artistic family, they all had jobs in addition to their artwork. Hence, my ability to easily move between creative & art administrative work. My goal is always to find a way to afford to bring art out into the street where everyday people go about their lives. Art for me is life and not apart from life.
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Visual Arts
Weldon Ryan (b.1962) was born in The Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, W.I. Graduate of the H.S. of Art and Design 1981 and attended the State University at New Paltz, 1981- 82, Attended Fashion Institute of Technology, 1982 – 85. Graduate of the Fashion Institute of Technology in 1985. A.A. in General Illustration. Interned at Quarto Book Publishing 1985-1986, freelance comp artist for Ad Agencies. 1987 to 1989 NYC Urban Park Ranger. In 1989 worked for NYPD as a Police Officer and Forensic Artist Unit in 1994 till retirement in 2004 now resides in the city of Palm Coast, Florida. Artist statement I consider myself a realist painter painting contemporary images in a post expressionist world of art.
I prefer painting large for the freedom and excitement large format images create. I do not frame my paintings because they each work is self contained within their edges. I prefer gallery wraps or thicker stretchers to encompass my work. I mostly paint figurative and usually feature the West Indian Carnival and scenes which has greater world wide acceptance. Carnival is a joyful and exceptional celebration or fete which is multicultural deriving from the exclusion of the indentured and the enslaved. It is an atypical subject matter unusual to most venues casting me into a new genre. I work in oil and sometimes use acrylics in my backgrounds. My solid color backgrounds are intended on bringing the viewer into the celebration of the fete of Carnival. I feel it’s important to crop tighter and not be traditional about my composition. Excluded parts of the anatomy or item provides the viewer to also create in their mind the continuity of the painting expanding the viewer’s imagination at the edges causing involuntary participation by the viewer. Carnival is about the celebration and the abandonment of rules which also work in this regard. I’m also challenged by the human anatomy and the natural world. I must sculpt in a 2 dimensional plane, the illusion of depth using light and color as my chisel applied by my brush. I also sculpt 3 dimensional which enhance my understanding of forms.
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Visual & Literary Arts
Navigating notions of motherland/ otherland, born and raised in Brooklyn to parents from Puerto Rico, Yasmin Hernandez’ work centers her ancestral land and lineage. Combining painting, mixed media, installation, video, writing, education, activism, and spirituality, she roots her creative practice within a liberation praxis. An alumna of the LaGuardia High School of the Arts in Manhattan, with a BFA in Painting from Cornell University, Yasmin has worked as an educator with Taller Puertorriqueño in Philadelphia, El Museo del Barrio and the Studio Museum in Harlem, and with Pre K-12th grade students in Aguadilla. Her talks and workshops on art as a healing/ liberation strategy have been offered to students at NYU, the University of
Puerto Rico, the University of Texas-Austin, Yale University, Oberlin College, and Pennsylvania State University, among other campuses and communities. Past exhibition venues include the Johnson Museum of Art, the Bronx Museum of Art, el Museo del Barrio, el Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico and the Jamaica Center of Art and Learning.
Bieké: Tierra de Valientes, first exhibited at el Museo Fuerte Conde de Mirasol, was
Yasmin’s tribute to dozens of activists who struggled to end US Navy bombing practices on Vieques. During several research trips there, she was introduced to the magic of the
bioluminescent bay which would transform her palette and inspire her first works on black canvas. Intimately witnessing her brother’s cancer battle and loss, Vieques, with its disproportionate cancer rates resulting from weapons contaminants, inspired her expansion from political struggle to a holistic liberation praxis. Her empowered midwife-assisted homebirths were in solidarity with women long suffering birthing injustice and all enduring environmental/ medical injustice on Vieques.
With Vieques planting the seed, deepening her commitment to homeland and a
decolonial journey, in 2014 Yasmin rematriated to Borikén. Arriving to the announcement of the colonial debt crisis,resulting imposed austerity, in 2017 she was invited to exhibit in the “Puerto Rico Bundle” of Occupy Museums’ Debt Fair installation at The Whitney Biennial. Months later she, her family, this archipelago, endured twin hurricanes Irma and María and their aftermath.Images of Soldaderas, her East Harlem mural honoring Julia de Burgos, Frida Kahlo and Puerto Rican/ Mexican solidarity, were circulated as part of various hurricane/ earthquake relief efforts. Her account was published by Hyperallergic as “An Artist’s Powerful Letter in Post Hurricane Puerto Rico."
Fireflies, in the dark nights of four months without electricity in her home and studio,
reignited her interest in bioluminescence. Learning lessons from Puerto Rican bioluminescence, recent projects envision sustainable strategies for transcending climate change and colonialism. Explorations of darkness and bioluminescence in her art and writing became her medicine in 2020 when she underwent an emergency eye surgery to rescue her vision. Blessed with new vision for new futures, she continues creating from her studio in Aguada. She shares her art and writing at yasminhernandezart.com and rematriatingboriken.com.
To learn more about the Digital Evolution Artist Retention Fellowship Program visit: www.cccadi.org/dear