AIRIE also announces the launch of two new residencies: a fellowship for Indigenous artists, and a two-year invitational fellowship that provides extended support and connection for an artist whose practice will elevate ecological and social issues connected to the Everglades.

The 2022 AIRIE Fellows are: Lola Flash, Maya Freelon, Ania Freer, Stephanie Garon, Francisco Masó, Arsimmer McCoy, Meg Ojala, Kunya Rowley and Cornelius Tulloch.  M. Carmen Lane was awarded the inaugural AIRIE Indigenous Artist Fellowship and Germane Barnes was awarded the inaugural AIRIE Invitational Fellowship. These artists will interact with the prompt, how to make the outdoors a space of belonging during their 2022 residencies. Saretta Morgan was named as Alternate for the AIRIE fellowship.

The AIRIE residency welcomes artists of all disciplines to engage with the natural world through their artistic practice. The residency program is open to emerging and established artists, writers, curators, filmmakers, choreographers, musicians and other creatives who want to contribute to the interpretation and communication of environmental themes and the Everglades’ impact on the environment and society. Artists have the opportunity to live and work inside Everglades National Park, the largest subtropical wilderness in the United States and are connected with park rangers, scientists, cultural historians and community leaders to promote understanding of the unique ecosystem of the Everglades and of our environment at large. Currently celebrating its 20th anniversary year, AIRIE has been a partner of Everglades National Park since its founding in 2001.  

Applications were reviewed during two rounds of adjudication by independent artists and experts. During the final round of adjudication, AIRIE’s National Advisory Committee, comprised of arts leaders who are helping the organization further its efforts to represent the voices and work of BIPOC artists and other marginalized communities, recognized several artists who were not chosen for fellowships with special commendation. The commended artists are: Ciara Ali Khan, Anuj Bhutani, Sam Carvosso, Sandra Jackson-Opoku, Rodney Jones II, Juan Luis Matos, Shoog McDaniel, Cara Page, Emanuel Ribas, Nicole Salcedo, Monica Uszerowicz and Akilah Watts.

About the 2022 AIRIE Fellows 

Germane Barnes (AIRIE Invitational Fellowship)

Barnes’ research and design practice investigates the connection between architecture and identity. Mining architecture’s social and political agency, he examines how the built environment influences black domesticity. He is an Assistant Professor and Director of the Community Housing Identity Lab (CHIL) at the University of Miami School of Architecture. He received the 2021 Harvard GSD Wheelwright Prize, is a 2021-22 Rome Prize Fellow and a winner of the Architectural League Prize. His design and research contributions have been published and exhibited internationally, among these: The Museum of Modern Art, The National Museum of African American History where he was identified as one of the future designers on the rise, The Swiss Institute, The Graham Foundation, and DesignMIAMI/ Art Basel. 

Lola Flash

Working at the forefront of genderqueer visual politics for more than three decades, Flash’s photography challenges stereotypes and gender, sexual and racial preconceptions. Her art and activism are profoundly connected, fueling a life-long commitment to visibility and preserving the legacy of LGBTQIA+ and communities of color worldwide through a practice firmly rooted in social justice advocacy around sexual, racial and cultural differences. She received her bachelor's degree from Maryland Institute College of Art and her Master’s degree from London College of Printing. In 2008, she was a resident at Light Work and in 2015, she participated at Alice Yard, in Trinidad. In 2019, she was a resident at the Center for Photography at Woodstock. Flash’s work is included in public collections such as the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Brooklyn Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art and MoMA. Pen + Brush Gallery’s inaugural exhibition for 2018, featured a 30-year retrospective of her significant photographs.

Maya Freelon

Maya Freelon is an award-winning visual artist whose work was described by the late poet Maya Angelou as "visualizing the truth about the vulnerability and power of the human being." Her artwork has been featured in numerous publications and she was named as “one of the most badass female artists in the biz” by Cosmopolitan magazine. She completed commissions for Google, Cadillac and the North Carolina Museum of Art and her monumental sculptures have been exhibited around the world, including at the Smithsonian Arts and Industries Building in Washington, D.C., and the U.S. Embassy in Madagascar.

Ania Freer 

Ania Freer is an Australian-Jamaican artist, filmmaker, cultural researcher, and curator based in Kingston, Jamaica. She attended The University of Sydney and received a Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology and Film Theory. Through installation and video portraiture, as well as her curatorial work, Freer addresses themes central to the Jamaican experience such as Black empowerment, resistance, feminism, environmental justice, and spirituality. She is the founder of Goat Curry Gallery and the documentary filmmaker behind the video portraiture series REAL TALK. Ania has exhibited at the London CHROM International Art Festival (2017) and the National Gallery of Jamaica’s Summer Exhibition (2019). She curated her first group exhibition, ‘All That Don’t Leave’, during her Curatorial and Art Writing fellowship at New Local Space Kingston (2019), is an inaugural Fellow in the 2021 cohort of Caribbean Film Academy and the grant recipient of the New York Black Creative Endeavours Grant (2020) and the Filmed by Bike BIPOC Filmmaker Grant, Oregon (2021).

Stephanie Garon

Stephanie Garon received dual science degrees from Cornell University, then attended Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA). Her environmental art has been exhibited internationally in London, Colombia, and South Korea, as well as across the United States. Her writing, a critical aspect of her artistic process, has been published in international literary journals and her chapbook will be published by Akinoga Press in 2021. She is a Hamiltonian Gallery Fellow and recipient of a Puffin Foundation Environmental Art grant.

M. Carmen Lane (AIRIE Indigenous Artist Fellowship)

M. Carmen Lane is a two:spirit African-American and Haudenosaunee (Mohawk/Tuscarora) artist, writer and facilitator living in Cleveland, Ohio. Lane is founder and director of ATNSC: Center for Healing & Creative Leadership, an urban retreat center and social practice experiment in holistic health, leadership development, Indigenous arts and culture and the Akhsótha Gallery located in the historic Buckeye-Shaker neighborhood. Lane’s work has been published in numerous journals and anthologies including the Yellow Medicine Review, Red Ink Magazine, Anomaly, and the Lambda Literary Award-nominated Sovereign Erotics: A Collection of Two Spirit Literatures. Lane’s first collection of poetry is Calling Out After Slaughter (2015). Lane has exhibited work during the FRONT 2018 Triennial, EFA Project Space and Praxis Fiber Workshop Gallery. In 2020, Lane was awarded a Joyce Award with ATNSC: Center for Healing and Creative Leadership.

Francisco Masó

Francisco Masó is an AfroLatinx visual artist living and working in Miami, Florida. He received a Bachelor’s degree in Stage Design from the Instituto Superior de Arte (2014) and is a graduate of both the Behavior Art School (2009) and the San Alejandro Academy of Fine Arts (2007). Recent solo exhibitions include Where’s Your Favorite Place for Political Art at Home? at Locust Projects, Miami, Florida (2021). Selected group exhibitions include Where there is Power at Oolite Arts, Miami, Florida (2021), “A.I.M Biennial.” South Florida. (2020), and Time for Change: Art and Social Unrest in the Jorge M. Pérez Collection at El Espacio 23, Miami, FL (2019). Masó is a nominee of the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grant (2020). He received the Oolite Arts’ Home + Away residency at Atlantic Center for the Arts (2020). He is a two-time finalist of the Cintas Foundation Fellowship in Visual Arts, a 2020 Ellies Creator Award winner by Oolite Arts, and a 2021 South Florida Cultural Consortium grant recipient.

Arsimmer McCoy

Arsimmer McCoy is a Miami Gardens, Florida-based storyteller, collaborative artist, educator, and cultural worker, who has been dedicated to these disciplines for over a decade. Raised in Richmond Heights, Florida, McCoy earned her Bachelor’s degree of Arts and literature at Florida Memorial University. She has performed around the world, alongside artists of multiple disciplines and considers it her obligation to bring back the knowledge and stories to her students in South Florida. McCoy produces work in the form of poetry, short story literature, creative writing, performance, educational workshops, and creative direction.

Meg Ojala (McKnight Visual Artist Fellow*)

In recent work, Meg Ojala combines large-scale landscape photographs, drawings, and text to imbue her subjects, such as a river or a bog, with a sense of agency. She employs ambiguous spatial illusions, disorienting points of view, and a bewildering sense of scale to shift the perception of the viewer and to elicit empathy for the natural world. Ojala, professor emerita of Art and Art History, St. Olaf College, received her BA from the University of Minnesota and her MFA from The School of The Art Institute of Chicago. She is a recipient of a 2020 McKnight Visual Artist Fellowship, McKnight Foundation Artist Fellowships for Photographers, Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative Grants, and a grant from the Southeastern Minnesota Arts Council. Ojala has exhibited nationally and internationally. She lives in Dundas, Minnesota.

*AIRIE is one of 16 member organizations of the Artist Communities Alliance selected to be part of the McKnight Artist Residency Consortium. The Consortium aims to build equitable capacity in the artist communities field while providing McKnight Artist Fellows with funded residency opportunities.

Kunya Rowley

A South Florida native, Kunya Rowley is a community, social impact, and artistic leader in Miami, Florida. He is the founder and Artistic Director of Hued Songs, a non-profit collective that celebrates Black culture through artistic experiences, as well as the Music Access, Arts, & Culture Manager at The Miami Foundation, leading the Foundation’s effort focused on making music education & the arts more accessible and equitable in the city. Kunya is a graduate of The University of Florida and is an alumnus of New World School of the Arts’ opera program. In addition to his artistic and directorial credits with Hued Songs, notable performance credits include performances with Magic City Opera, Slow Burn Theatre, Opera Naples, Florida Grand Opera, Orchestra Miami, Klezmer Orchestra, and M Ensemble. Kunya is a 2017 recipient of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation’s Knight Arts Challenge grant, which propelled the founding of Hued Songs. 

Cornelius Tulloch

Cornelius Tulloch is a Miami, Florida-based interdisciplinary artist and designer. With work transcending the barriers of architecture, visual art, and photography, Tulloch focuses on how creative mediums can be combined to tell powerful stories. With inspiration from his Jamaican and African American heritage, his work expresses how bodies exist between cultures, borders, and characteristics to create spatial impact. His work has been exhibited in fairs and museums including The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Washington D.C., Pulse Art Fair, Miami, Florida, and the Museo Nazionale Delle Arti Del XXI Secolo, Rome, Italy. In 2016, he was named a Presidential Scholar in the Arts and is included in the permanent collection of the Studio Museum in Harlem.  He is a winner of the Your Portrait 2020 competition, and recipient of a 2020 Ellies Creator Award from Oolite Arts.

Saretta Morgan (Alternate)

Saretta Morgan is the author of the chapbooks room for a counter interior, and Feeling Upon Arrival, and the forthcoming publication, Alt-Nature. Her recent work engages ecology and migration in the Southwest U.S. with attention to histories of militarization and incarceration. She has received support from Jerome Foundation, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Headlands Center for the Arts, Arizona Commission on the Arts, University of Pittsburgh’s Center for African American Poetry and Poetics, The Virginia Piper Center for Creative Writing, and Oak Spring Garden Foundation, among others. She has designed programming at the nexus of poetics and space for the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Center for Imagination in the Borderlands, Dia Beacon, Arizona Humanities, and organizations across the country. She is based between Mohave Valley and Phoenix, AZ where she contributes to the migrant justice work of No More Deaths, the Phoenix Environmental Justice Coalition, and About Face: Vets Against War.

First Round Jurors

Elisabeth Condon, Darius V. Daughtry, Heike Dempster, Michelle Lisa Polissaint, Onajide Shabaka, James Allister Sprang, Pioneer Winter, Sasha Wortzel

AIRIE National Advisory Committee
Germane Barnes, Mel Chin, Houston Cypress, Nasir Dean aka Note Marcato, Blake-Anthony Johnson, Nichole Levy, Larry Ossei-Mensah, Mikhaile Solomon, Amanda Williams

About AIRIE
Artists in Residence in Everglades (AIRIE) was founded in 2001 through the efforts of Everglades National Park’s Chief of Interpretation Alan Scott and artist Donna Marxer. AIRIE, a 501c-3 not-for-profit, has welcomed over 195 artists, writers, curators, choreographers, musicians and other creatives to its residency program, permeating the national and international art landscape with unique interpretations and stories of the Everglades. The organization, in partnership with the Everglades National Park, empowers artists to think creatively and critically about their relationship to the environment with a mission of revealing new paths forward.

Support for Artists in Residence in Everglades is provided by the generous support of John S. and James L. Knight Foundation; The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; the National Endowment for the Arts; Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs and the Cultural Affairs Council, the Miami-Dade County Mayor and Board of County Commissioners of Miami Dade County; the Department of State, Division of Cultural Affairs, the Florida Council on Arts and Culture and the State of Florida; WEGE Foundation, The Camilla & Earl McGrath Foundation, Florida Humanities Council and private donors.

For additional information, visit www.airie.org and follow @airieverglades on social media.