OPA-LOCKA, Fla. – There were hundreds of art exhibits this week in Miami-Dade County. A little activists’ haven with a garden in Opa-locka opened one with a purpose.
Phillip Thomas, an award-winning artist from Kingston, curated the “Jamaica On My Mind: Aliveness and Livity” exhibit. He chose works by 15 compatriots including Oneika Russel and Omari “Afrikan” Ra, featured in the Caribbean island nation’s National Gallery.
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“The exhibition sort of crafts an idea between artists that were engaged in state building or nation building, and all sorts of artists that were trying to find their own place in this new state that was being built,” Thomas recently told Natu Tweh, of WLRN..
Ten North Group, a non-profit organization aiming to use art to revitalize affordable housing in Miami-Dade, opened the gallery exhibit during Art Basel, the leading fair with prestigious galleries at the convention center in Miami Beach, and Miami Art Week’s network of pop-up satellite fairs.
According to a statement by Willie Logan, the nonprofit’s president, The Arc, at 675 Ali Baba Ave., hosts Art of Transformation, or AOT, events to “highlight the powerful connection between African and African Diaspora literature and visual art.”
Other Jamaican creatives who were part of exhibits this week in Miami-Dade, included Steve James, a Miami-based photographer, at the “Let There Be Reggae” event Friday and Saturday at the River Landing Shops, in Allapattah.
For more information about the Ten North Group nonprofit and the AOT program of events, visit this page.