Diaspora Vibe Cultural Arts Incubator records

Rosie Gordon-Wallace (1951-) is the founder and curator of Diaspora Vibe Gallery and Diaspora Vibe Cultural Arts Incubator, which specialize in cultivating Caribbean and Latin American art with a focus on supporting emerging artists. Originally from Jamaica, Gordon-Wallace studied medical microbiology at the University of the West Indies and immunology and microbiology at the University of Manchester. She worked at the University of the West Indies before coming to the United States in 1978 to research at the University of Miami. She was working as a senior consultant for Searle Pharmaceuticals when she decided to focus full-time on her cultural endeavors in 1999. Since then, she has initiated and produced a variety of transnational creative programs that redefine the concept of “diaspora,” including the International Cultural Exchange program, the Caribbean Crossroads series, the Artist-In-Residence program, and numerous community-based outreach programs. Gordon-Wallace is active in the local community, serving on the boards of the National Performance Network, the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, the Design & Architecture Senior High School, and Bay Shore Lutheran Church. She has received numerous awards for her contributions to the cultural community, including the In the Company of Women 2013 award for Arts and Entertainment and the Red Cross Spectrum award for culture. Mrs. Gordon-Wallace's interviewforms part of the Caribbean Diaspora Oral History Collection at the University of Miami Libraries Special Collections.

Diaspora Vibe Cultural Arts Incubator was created to promote, nurture, and cultivate the vision and diverse talents of emerging artists from the Caribbean and the Latin American Diaspora through exhibitions,  artists in residence programs, international exchange, and education and outreach activities that celebrate Miami-Dade's rich cultural and social fabric. Diaspora Vibe is the 2013 Andy Warhol Initiative Grant Recepient.

Diaspora Vibe Cultural Arts Incubator (DVCAI) is an organization that promotes emerging artists from the Caribbean and Latin America (and their diasporas) by providing multilayered programming and infrastructure to support artistic practice. DVCAI was originally called Diaspora Vibe Gallery when it was founded in 1996 by Jamaican-born resident of Miami, Rosie Gordan-Wallace, who is also the current Executive Director. In 2003, DVG became officially recognized as a registered non-profit charity and henceforth became DVCAI, receiving support from the Miami–Dade Department of Cultural Affairs the Cultural Affairs Council, the Mayor, the Miami–Dade County Board of County Commissioners, as well as from private donors. Gordan-Wallace aspired to form the organization in response to a community need to nurture and increase the visibility of African-American, Caribbean, and Latino emerging artists – specifically in a hemispheric, diasporic city such as Miami where minority groups are often segregated by way of race, ethnicity, class, and language. While the landscape of Miami’s racial and ethnic politics were the basis for DVCAI’s formation, Gordan-Wallace’s experiences as an aspiring artist in Jamaica with limited artistic role models also spurred her desire to create a resource for future generations; she says, “I am an artist who creates and curates work using the opportunity to nurture, expose and promote Caribbean artists in the diaspora and in the Caribbean. This is a strategic platform. It enables and empowers visual and performing artists, spaces to deliver professional works of art. This action offers Caribbean artists examples of artworks, that I was previously not afforded as a young person growing up” (VoyageMIA).

In the last two decades DVCAI has provided support to thousands of artists - in particular to over 1500 artists from the African diaspora. In excess of dedicated workspace and funding, DVCAI offers its sponsored artists the freedom to explore their artistic expression without the need to conform to preconceived notions of what high art should be. Alongside their own practice, DVCAI creates a community for multiple artists, curators, cultural critics and writers to connect and exchange ideas and also bring together culturally diverse audiences and collectors to support the work. Gordan-Wallace’s vision from the start was that DVCAI would foster such a community because the formation of Caribbean art as an emerging canon has often relied on external support; she states, “There is still a reliance on validation from ‘outside’ and the usual hotspots that deliver the same few names of ‘Diasporic’ representation” (VoyageMIA).

DVCAI first began in white box spaces and is currently housed in virtual real estate; however, the organization has exhibited artists’ work in both national and international spaces such as the Birmingham Alabama Space One Eleven Space; The Moengo Art Festival in Suriname; the Carifesta Festival in Haiti; the Jamaica Biennial; and the Havana Biennial. They have also partnered with more local organizations such as the Bakehouse Art Complex; Miami Light Project; Miami Art Museum (PAMM); the Black Archives; The Bass Museum; Funding Arts Network; Miami-Dade County; Design and Architecture Senior High School; Haitian Cultural Arts Alliance; and the Broward Library, as well as the Andy Warhol Foundation, The Ford Foundation, The Knight Foundation, and the State of Florida. DVCAI also operates an international exchange program with graduates from Edna Manley College in Jamaica. In addition to DVCAI’s archives housed in University of Miami’s Special Collections, DVCAI was awarded an Institute of Museum and Library Services grant to digitize the collection in partnership with Florida International University’s Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC). The digitization process will increase access to the DVCAI archive by making it openly available despite potential budgetary restraints, which is of particular importance to non-North American institutions.

• Laura Bass
  UGrow fellow for the Department of Manuscripts and Archives Management, 2019-2020

(1) VoyageMIA and Rosie Gordan-Wallace. “Meet Rosie Gordan-Wallace.” 23 Aug. 2018, http://voyagemia.com/interview/meet-rosie-gordon-wallace/.