BAKEHOUSE ART COMPLEX ANNOUNCES APPOINTMENT OF FIVE CURATORIAL FELLOWS
INAUGURAL COHORT TO ADVANCE WORK OF ORGANIZATION, ITS ARTISTS, AND THEIR CONNECTIVITY TO COMMUNITY
The Bakehouse Art Complex announces the appointment of its inaugural curatorial cohort, made possible through a $150,000 grant from The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. The five fellows, selected through a juried process from among more than fifty applicants responding to an Open Call, begin their eight-month appointment on January 15, 2020:
Anita Braham is an arts professional and cultural producer, currently serving as Associate Director of Adult Programs and Audience Engagement at the Perez Art Museum Miami. Anita has worked at PAMM for five years and, with her team, produces an average of 70 adult programs and 970 public tours per year. Prior to her work at PAMM, Anita held positions at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, Boys and Girls Club of Broward County, and Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art, among others. Anita is passionate about making art accessible to all and enjoys creating meaningful and educational art experiences for many members of greater Miami-Dade.
Ariana Hernandez-Reguant is a cultural and urban anthropologist whose collaborative projects merge ethnography, civic engagement, and socially-informed art practices. She has a PhD in Anthropology from the University of Chicago and has worked in placemaking and social engagement art projects in the San Diego/Tijuana border and, more recently, in Miami. Here, she founded HICCUP (Hialeah Contemporary Culture Project), which was awarded a Knight Foundation Art Challenge Grant in 2014 for a series of research-based, collaborative community interventions with artists, cultural producers, and activists. In 2017-18, she curated a series of events on placemaking and urban segregation for the Miami Museum of Art and Design (MOAD). She is a 2019 winner of The Block film grant from Oolite Arts and is currently conducting ethnographic fieldwork, while also working on a documentary film in the historical community of Seminola (Hialeah).
Ricardo Mor is a Miami-based curator, writer, commentator, and artist. As curator and exhibitions organizer, he has worked on nearly thirty exhibitions during his tenures at the Miami Center for Architecture & Design and Locust Projects. As writer and commentator, his work has been featured in numerous publications including the Miami Herald, Cultured Magazine, and Art Agenda, among others.
Dorian Emerson Munroe is a first generation Miami creative, born to Caribbean parents who migrated from Guyana, South America. After working on shows for networks such as MTV, VH1, and VICE, he shot, directed, and edited his debut feature film, American Town, (2018) starring Dakota Powers (American Honey). He is the 2019 first prize winner of The Block, Oolite Arts’ new short documentary contest, for his film “These Kids This City,” on Liberty City’s MLK Day Bike Riders.
Helen Pena-Smicker is a queer Black ecofeminist, cultural producer, and community organizer from Miami. In 2017, she founded (F)empower, which she defines as “a Miami-based collective of queer feminists fighting facism through cultural interventions.” Helen fiercely believes in the power that cultural work has to shift consciousness and fuel revolutions. As an artist raised by a single immigrant Dominicana in Miami, she is devoted to freeing black women everywhere. She is also a community organizer building black futures with the abolitionist organization, Dream Defenders.
The fellows were selected based on their experience and commitment to socially-engaged creative practices that seek to build community and engage diverse populations and neighborhoods throughout Miami. They were interviewed by a panel of jurors, consisting of Will and Robin Vazquez, who have a long-standing relationship living and working in Wynwood Norte; Dr. April Thompson-Williams, Principal of Jose de Diego Middle School; Adler Guerrier, resident artist at Bakehouse; and, Amanda Bradley, Cathy Leff, and Laura Novoa of Bakehouse.
Through this Knight Foundation-funded program, Bakehouse will address one of three overarching goals in its strategic plan: to invest in and elevate the quality and work of its artists and programs and their relevance and connectivity to the surrounding community. Simultaneously, it supports the development of new curatorial voices in Miami.
The cohort will challenge the work and expand the practice of Bakehouse artists by creating opportunities that promote greater connectivity between the organization, its artists, and the neighborhood in which they are embedded. Furthermore, it aligns with Knight Foundation's goals of connecting people to place and each other through access to art.
“Bakehouse believes that art and artists are a tool of transformation and community building,” commented Bakehouse Director Cathy Leff. “We are excited to welcome and work with our inaugural cohort of curatorial fellows, to learn from and with them, and to advance our desire to become an even more robust commons for critical discourse, civic engagement, and socially- impactful creative practices.”
The fellows will work with the organization and its artists over the course of the eight months to co-develop site-specific, community-relevant projects, programs, and/or installations placed in and around the Bakehouse campus and extending into the surrounding neighborhood. These collaborations will serve as the foci of Bakehouse’s public programming, fostering meaningful dialog and exchange among its artists as well as with the greater Miami community.
With a prior grant from Knight Foundation, a new five-year plan was developed and adopted by the Bakehouse Board of Directors in January 2019. Bakehouse’s plan recognizes the loss of affordable spaces for artists in Miami’s urban core; therefore, its 2.3-acre site is increasingly more important to the city’s overall arts and cultural infrastructure. The combination of market conditions, recognition that art-making and cultural production are central to Miami’s identity and future, along with the need to address the affordability crisis, makes the timing of a Bakehouse project not only viable but necessary. The proposed rezoning will enable the organization to deliver on its mission and provide expanded opportunities for artists and the greater community.
This Knight Foundation-funded program will enable the organization to refine and further develop its future programming in ways that meaningfully transform the organization itself and the life of its neighborhood.
About the Bakehouse Art Complex
Bakehouse envisions a world that supports and values artists and recognizes their ability to shape, reflect, and transform our world. Consistent with this vision, we are committed to developing, supporting, and retaining Miami’s artistic talent, in part by using our 2.3-acre Wynwood campus to address the need for affordable housing opportunities, additional workspaces for artists, and community-based cultural and open spaces. Bakehouse has been in Wynwood for thirty-five years, serving the needs of thousands of artists and members of the greater Miami community.
Comprised of approximately 100 Miami-based artists deriving from diverse backgrounds, working from painting to performance, traditional to experimental, individual to collective, Bakehouse serves as their home, providing space to develop their practice and build community.
Bakehouse is the largest artist studio complex in Miami and houses more than 50 studios of varying sizes, two galleries, a classroom, print room, darkroom, ceramics facilities, and woodworking and welding areas. These spaces, mostly unavailable outside of university campuses, enable artists to work, make, discover, learn and share their practices with each other.
Founded in 1985 by artists for artists, in a former industrial Art Deco-era bakery, Bakehouse Art Complex provides coveted studio residencies, infrastructure, and community to enable the highest level of artistic creativity, development, and collaboration for the most promising talent.
Bakehouse receives ongoing support from Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs, Florida State Division of Cultural Affairs, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, The Jorge M. Pérez Family Foundation, and Wille Foundation,. It also is supported by Akerman, Kaufman Rossin, and the Lester Pancoast Fund for the Japanese Garden at The Miami Foundation.
About the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation
Knight Foundation is a national foundation with strong local roots. We invest in journalism, in the arts, and in the success of cities where brothers John S. and James L. Knight once published newspapers. Our goal is to foster informed and engaged communities, which we believe are essential for a healthy democracy. For further information see kf.org.
For more information, contact:
Amanda Bradley, Residency Program + External Relations Manager
Bakehouse Art Complex
305.576.2828
abradley@bacfl.org
Anita Braham is an arts professional and cultural producer, currently serving as Associate Director of Adult Programs and Audience Engagement at the Perez Art Museum Miami. Anita has worked at PAMM for five years and, with her team, produces an average of 70 adult programs and 970 public tours per year. Prior to her work at PAMM, Anita held positions at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, Boys and Girls Club of Broward County, and Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art, among others. Anita is passionate about making art accessible to all and enjoys creating meaningful and educational art experiences for many members of greater Miami-Dade. 
Ariana Hernandez-Reguant is a cultural and urban anthropologist whose collaborative projects merge ethnography, civic engagement, and socially-informed art practices. She has a PhD in Anthropology from the University of Chicago and has worked in placemaking and social engagement art projects in the San Diego/Tijuana border and, more recently, in Miami. Here, she founded HICCUP (Hialeah Contemporary Culture Project), which was awarded a Knight Foundation Art Challenge Grant in 2014 for a series of research-based, collaborative community interventions with artists, cultural producers, and activists. In 2017-18, she curated a series of events on placemaking and urban segregation for the Miami Museum of Art and Design (MOAD). She is a 2019 winner of The Block film grant from Oolite Arts and is currently conducting ethnographic fieldwork, while also working on a documentary film in the historical community of Seminola (Hialeah).
Ricardo Mor is a Miami-based curator, writer, commentator, and artist. As curator and exhibitions organizer, he has worked on nearly thirty exhibitions during his tenures at the Miami Center for Architecture & Design and Locust Projects. As writer and commentator, his work has been featured in numerous publications including the Miami Herald, Cultured Magazine, and Art Agenda, among others. 
Helen Pena-Smicker is a queer Black ecofeminist, cultural producer, and community organizer from Miami. In 2017, she founded (F)empower, which she defines as “a Miami-based collective of queer feminists fighting facism through cultural interventions.” Helen fiercely believes in the power that cultural work has to shift consciousness and fuel revolutions. As an artist raised by a single immigrant Dominicana in Miami, she is devoted to freeing black women everywhere. She is also a community organizer building black futures with the abolitionist organization, Dream Defenders. 
