Rosie Gordon-Wallacespeaking during an artist talk at her Diaspora Vibe Gallery

Rosie Gordon-Wallace is the founder and director of Diaspora Vibe Cultural Arts Incubator, a not-for-proft local arts organization based in the Design District in Miami, Florida. Diaspora Vibe Gallery exhibits the works of artists from the Caribbean diaspora and Latin America.

 

Rosie is an iconic figure who has been championing Caribbean art for most of her life. In the 14 years of founding her gallery, she has developed a wonderful community of local and international artists.

 

The conversations we had during Art Basel in Miami this past week follows:

 

Describe your process of working with the artists

 

I am a scientist, and one of the things I try to bring into the artists' lives is some sort of organization of their materials. I always ask for their artist statements and their biographies. I always ask them, "What if?" To imagine what the space would be like, what would be the narrative if they had everything they wanted. And we tell them what we have, we give them a schematic of our space, and we come up with a show. That's a part of the curatorial process that I bring to the table. It's not just about me. We have our board, we also partner with other curators around the world and I'm always looking for the critical voice. Because I believe that, as you imagine the space, as you do the shows, you have to document it. And by documenting I mean both imagery and in content. Someone has to write about this to make sense of it. My personal vision is to leave a legacy of all of these shows, so that when your children come, you can say, "there is a space that does work up this region, it started in 1996, and these are the catalogs." So we try to do a catalog, we hire a professional photographer, and we seek funding. Yes, I want funding to pay the rent, the electricity and the telephone, but the funding is really to document. To get a photographer, to get a videographer to be able to continue to imbued other talents in the art world. You have visual artists and performers as well. My definition of art is as broad as it can be. If you come with an idea that I can support, I am not going to censor the idea, because I would be competing. I am not an artist. I think in a mature visual language, and because I am a microbiologist I certainly know how to look at imagery. I appreciate art, and have a deep, deep, seated love for the Caribbean. I could live anywhere in the Caribbean, regardless of the hardships. I think we owe it to the diaspora community to make sure that our experiences, our cultures, our lives become documented. We are not just here to work hard for America. We are here to share our collective experiences with America. We are here to make their lives better by sharing our cultures with them.

 

Describe the diaspora

 

Diaspora is a very intimate definition for me. I'm going to give you my personal definition. Webster's Dictionary definition is: "People who've left their homeland to live somewhere else, and form communities in that state." It is this scattering of people. Immigrants form diasporas from their homeland in America and form families here. I am from the Jamaican diaspora. The larger diaspora is the Caribbean diaspora. There are over 500,000 Jamaicans living in Broward County in Florida, so we are a significant diaspora here. It is about immigrants, it is about movement, it is about borders, it is about "hyphenated experiences." I am a Jamaican-American. What the hell is that? How do you define a Jamaican-American? But if I think of myself as a Caribbean woman living in the diaspora, it's not permanent. It flows like the sea, it makes me feel like I can go in and out, and that's my personal definition. We are scattered, but we have the opportunity to move in and out of our collective space. I pay my mortgage here, but I can live in the Caribbean. It's personal for me. It took me a little while to choose the right name for the gallery. "Diaspora" meaning we are scattered here. "Vibe" meaning the rhythm of our hearts, what you feel when we meet as immigrants. And of course, "Gallery," meaning the space. The not-for-profit is "Diaspora Vibe Cultural Arts Incubator." It's a long answer to an intimate question. There's a definition in Webster's dictionary which says that Diaspora is a scattering of people that have moved from one place to the next. That's a pinnacle definition. But diaspora has many layers: it has an emotional layer, a financial layer, it has an experiential layer.

 

When you stand in line on 79th street to get a green card at two o'clock in the morning, you know you are part of something that is different. When you get that green card and walk out with it in the sun after you've stood on your feet all day, only someone who's done that understands what that means. That is the diaspora that I belong to, the one that has to come and stand in line to become something else.

 

What does it take to do the kind of work that you are doing?

 

The gallery is the space, the walls, and the not-for-profit is the engine that drives the work to the wall. I've never said that before, I like that. The not-for-profit allows me to partner with my board, partners, and with friends.

 

I think that we are going through a really difficult time now, financial difficulty. My neighbor in the building is closing his business after 12 years. This is my seventh year. Where is the community? This is the question that I'm asking. Are these sacrifices worthwhile? These are valid questions. Who am I sacrificing for? This is not an ego journey. If I want to take an egotistical journey, I'm going to go to the gym to lose twenty pounds. This is what I genuinely believe needs to be done, but this work cannot be done in a vacuum. I want to partner with the community. I want the community that I think I'm serving to know that this is a safe place. I want them to be able to say "Hey Rosie, I have a friend who just moved here. She has a nice body of work, would you look at it?" We would respectfully make an appointment with that artist. When they leave here, even if we are not going to work with them, they feel validated. They feel as a professional should feel, contrary to what happens outside in most of the other galleries. I know that I'm working with someone, and I know that I'm working for someone. I'm just not sure if the sacrifice and the balance pays out, because this has been a really tough year. I am not a whiner. I am not someone who is going to roll up in a corner and say, "I can't do this any more." Every day I wake up and I ask, "How can I do this?" And I think you should be fed from where your spirit is fed. Where is the community support? When are we checked of and must go here to support this work that is being done. It's not about me. I can die tomorrow. If the work has foundation, if the work is properly structured, it will last. And I think that it would be hard to give up thirteen years of branding because we don't have any money. It's almost shameful to let finances prevent our dreams and our desires not to be quantified. But we live in a space where money is the driver, and if you don't have the money, there are no dreams to realize. Unfortunately that is not the America we came to in 1978.

 

How many artists do you work with on a regular basis?

 

In a year we have about 40 because we did a group show earlier that had 30 artists. I'm not so focused on the number. I am more focused on the talent that hasn't been realized yet. During the time that we've been doing this, I think we had over 400 plus artists that we have worked with. And if we were to document the artists that we worked with in the islands, it would be more. We keep in touch with them via email. Sometimes their lives get very shaky and they are not able to healthfully do work. When you are creating, sometimes your emotional creativity is not there as well. And there is a big slip between that and your ability to move forward.

 

Caribbean Art Incubator.
Did you start the gallery as a place for Caribbean artists, and how did that evolve?

 

It was never strict. I always tell people that I don't know anything about European art, the one that gets paid 10 and 15 million dollars. The focus on the Caribbean is really where my knowledge base is. That's why I do the Caribbean. It's about where I'm comfortable. It's about what I know.

 

I know the immigrant experience, so the broader definition is artist of color, because if you're black and you are from Ecuador and come to America, your experience is different from someone who is non negroid. So artists of color, artists of the Caribbean, and immigrants, which is why I can work with the Asian diaspora. Plus there is a plural historical weaving of indentured slaves from China and from Korea to the Caribbean, of Indians from India to the Caribbean, of Africans from Africa to the Caribbean. The history of colonization has been so potent to the region that we really have a lot of pain to work through. Can you imagine somebody owning you without you agreeing that they could own you? I don't think I would survive. But now we can tell another story. We have a responsibility. Our forefathers died to make us be here. My family is part maroon, and maroons in Jamaica were warriors. When I go to where my father is from and go up into the hills, and see how those people used to stay at night and come down in the early morning to poison the British soldiers and run back up in the hills, I am proud that they thought that our country was worth fighting for. I don't take it lightly. I really feel a sense of urgency. I can't put it into words for you. Whether it is a responsibility I put on myself, I don't know. But I feel this need to do this work.

 

If you were asked to explain what Caribbean Art is. How would you explain it?

 

This is a question that scholars in Caribbean studies around the United States are struggling to answer. I will answer from my point of view. Veerle Poupeye who wrote the book, Caribbean Art, defines Caribbean Art as: Someone living in the region, someone from the region, someone doing work that is considered from the region defines Caribbean art. I think that Caribbean Art is a state of mind. I think that when a foreigner, for instance, comes to live in our region and lives there for 30-40 years and becomes an artist, that person is as much Caribbean as we are. I don't think that we have the right to deny someone this idiom, this language that we know we have. We have a language that is uniquely ours. Whoever describes this language is a Caribbean artist. I don't think you have to be from the region to do it. There is a literal way of defining what is Caribbean. We feel it, we know it. But there is a contemporary way of doing so. When we send our children to contemporary schools and have them come out with another language, that doesn't make them less Caribbean. They are not going to do the typical lady with the basket walking down the street, but because they are from the region, they are Caribbean artists. So that's another layer. Then you have expatriates that come and infuse our culture with a new way from Paris and Uraguay and all over the world. Whatever comes from that experience is another layer of Caribbean art. The narrative is about geography, it's about language, it's about experience, it's about a focus, it's about the person's desire to explain their experiences while in the region, which is why there is such a difficulty in talking about a Caribbean canon. We do have a canon. It is recognizable. It is not necessarily the one that we want to own. But there is a Caribbean canon that is typically Haitian. There is one that is typically Jamaican, and they are different because we are sovereign countries and our experiences are different.

 

When I say Caribbean Art, there is no easy definition but you feel it. I always ask my audience to close their eyes, and to think of an image that they think is from the Caribbean. And I see people smile when they do it because it's always about a banana, a plantain, the beach, or some flowers. It's never about the contemporary way that we want to be seen as. We want to be seen as sophisticated citizens of the world. We don't want to be seen as no country tree-living, half ragged, we want to be placed in the historical archive of sophisticated countries. The sophistication is different from the American sophistication, but we want to be there in that manner. That is what I am hoping will happen as we do the work.

 

You have established a commendable vision. How do you plan to achieve this vision of yours? It's grand and involves a lot of work.

 

I don't have an answer for that. It's actually really emotional, because it's so pressing on a daily basis. And I really wish I had more partners to do this work. I really wish I could call a colleague and say, "This is how I feel today about this work." There are people who say they are doing Caribbean work, and when the going gets tough, they just disappear. Or when there is a critical mass about Caribbean work, you see twenty people say they are doing the work. But there are very few people who year after year have been focused on the region. I don't have a lot of friends to call. That's the nicest way I can put it. But I would love to have people to call that would like to focus on this region called the Caribbean, I would love to be able to have colleagues.

 

The universities have the critical thinking studies. Many of our graduates come out and they can't get jobs because the museums will not hire them, so the cycle continues again. And without the critical thinkers, without the documentation work being done, we are back to square one. So do I give up? Do I stop in 2009? Does someone think that we are worthy to continue to fund us? It's hard.

 

Without the focus of critical thinkers, without the focus of writers, without the focus of people saying that this Caribbean region is important to the dialogue of art...The fact that we live in another country, that we have children who are going to universities here that are not going to come out with a Caribbean esthetic, whatever that esthetic is, how do we sustain this intellectual dialogue about what is happening. It's not just enough for you to be black, or indian or chinese. It's more important to decide from whence you've come. The tension between an African American esthetic and Caribbean esthetic is foolishness, because everybody comes from the continent of Africa if you are of color. Whether we talk about an African American focus, or a Caribbean focus, we need to have a common place where people can have a dialogue around the work. Because if you look at what is happening to the artist, the artists of color are still not getting their rightful place, they are still getting the crumbs from under the table. It's not just about their intellect, it's about how they turn up around the mainstream, the dollars are in the mainstream. I don't want to stay at the side doing this work.

 

Rosie Gordon-Wallace can be reached at Diaspora Vibe Gallery, 3938 North Miami Avenue, Madonna Building, Design District, Miami, Florida. For more information about the Gallery, visit: www.diasporavibe.com. Phone: 305-573-4046.