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Haitian Heritage Month + Cuban Independence Day

 

 

 

 

 

 

In celebration of HAITIAN HERITAGE MONTH + CUBAN INDEPENDENCE DAY, we have curated a group of video interviews from the ArtSpeak archives with prominent people in the arts — across all art disciplines — who are connected to Haiti or Cuba and to the Miami and South Florida areas.

Beginning March, 2020, the videos below were recorded via Zoom. Click on any video link (below the images). You must be connected to the Internet to view the videos.

 

 

 

M.J. Fièvre: Author, Poet, Editor

 

M.J. FIÈVRE was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. She moved to Miami, Florida in 2002. Her first mystery novel, Le Feu de la Vengeance, was self-published at the age of sixteen. At just nineteen years-old, she signed her first book contract with Hachette-Deschamps, in Haiti, for the publication of a Young Adult book titled La Statuette Malefique. As of today, Fièvre has authored nine books in French that are widely read in Europe and the French Antilles.

 

 

 

Photographer Carl-Phillipe Juste

 

CARL-PHILLIPE JUSTE is a Haitian born, politically active photographer. Since 1991 he has been working with the Miami Herald and has been showcasing his work throughout the world.

 

 

 

Artist Firelei Báez

 

FIRELEI BÁEZ was born in the Dominican Republic to Dominican and Haitian parents, and immigrated to Miami at the age of nine.  Báez makes large scale, intricate works on paper that are intrinsically indebted to a rigorous studio practice. Through a convergence of interest in anthropology, science fiction, black female subjectivity and women’s work; her art explores the humor and fantasy involved in self-making within diasporic societies, which have an ability to live with cultural ambiguities and use them to build psychological and even metaphysical defenses against cultural invasions.

 

 

 

 

Nat Chediak: Movies + Music

 

NAT CHEDIAK is the dean of South Florida’s film exhibitors. He is the founder of the Miami Film Festival and served as its director for 18  years (1984–2001). He is also the author of Diccionario de Jazz Latino and a three-time Grammy and three-time Latin Grammy music producer.

 

 

 

Artivist Leonor Anthony

 

LEONOR ANTHONY is a multi-disciplinary artist and activist based in Miami. Born in Havana, Cuba, she immigrated to the United States with her family as a young child. She is an accredited scholar, artist, photographer and published author. Leonor is well-known for her courageous use of materials and for creating works that invoke controversial issues. Anthony co-authored Sounds of Freedom with photographer Roberto Polillo.

 

 

 

Orlando Jacinto Garcia: Contemporary Classical Composer, Conductor, Educator

 

Through 200 works composed for a wide range of performance genres including interdisciplinary and site-specific works, and works with and without electronics for orchestra, choir, soloists, and a variety of chamber ensembles, ORLANDO JACINTO GARCÍA has established himself as an important figure in the new music world. The distinctive character of his music has often been described as “time suspended- haunting sonic explorations,” qualities he developed from his studies with Morton Feldman among others. Born in Havana in 1954, Garcia migrated to the United States in 1961.

 

 

 

Victor Deupi: Architect, Historian, Educator

 

VICTOR DEUPI is a Cuban-American teacher of architectural history and theory, design, and representation at the University of Miami School of Architecture in Coral Gables. He received a Bachelor of Science in architecture from the University of Virginia, a Master of Architecture from Yale University, and a Ph.D. in architecture from the University of Pennsylvania.  His books include Architectural Temperance: Spain and Rome, 1700-1759 (Routledge 2015), Transformations in Classical Architecture: New Directions in Research and Practice (Oscar Riera Ojeda Publishers, 2018), Emilio Sanchez in New York and Latin America (Routledge, 2020), Cuban Modernism: Mid-Century Architecture 1940-1970, with Jean-Francois Lejeune (Birkhäuser Verlag, 2021), and The Modern Stable and The Modern Winery, both with Oscar Riera Ojeda (Rizzoli, 2021).

 

 

 

Playwright Juan C. Sanchez

 

JUAN C. SANCHEZ is a Cuban-born playwright who’s been living in Miami since he was seven years old. His work includes the immersive productions of Miami Motel Stories: Little Havana directed by Tamilla Woodard; Miami Motel Stories: MiMo directed by Mia Rovegno; Wynwood Stories directed by Tai Thompson; and Miami Motel Stories: North Beach directed by Tai Thompson — all commissioned and produced by Juggerknot Theatre Company.

 

 

 

Juana Valdes: Multi-Disciplined Artist

 

Cuban-born artist JUANA VALDES uses printmaking, photography, sculpture, ceramics, and site-specific installations, to explore issues of race, transnationalism, gender, labor, and class. Functioning as an archive, Valdes’s work analyzes and decodes experiences of migration as a person of Afro Caribbean heritage.