Join AIRIE Fellow Ania Freer in conversation with DVCAI Founder, Rosie Gordon-Wallace, as they discuss Freer's current residency and her research focus on the different types of memories, oral histories, and mythologies people have with the natural environment of the Everglades. She's asked people to speak to their lived, ephemeral experiences within different parts of the Everglades while investigating how ancestral knowledge and cultural practices still exist to serve and inform their everyday lives.

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, Ania addresses themes central to the Jamaican experience such as Black empowerment, resistance, feminism, environmental justice, and spirituality. All while disrupting imperialist narratives, Ania collects meaningful, lesser-known stories in order to uplift the historical legacies of autonomy, self-determination, and liberation that shape her island home. She is the founder of Goat Curry Gallery, a platform which features artworks from Jamaican craft producers along with her documentary series REAL TALK, an intimate collection of interviews from across Jamaica, exploring identity through themes of social justice, class, race and familial relationships.

Ania has exhibited in the National Gallery of Jamaica’s Summer Exhibition (2019), she is an upcoming Art Omi: Artist in Residence Fellow (June 2022) a Caribbean Film Academy Fellow (2021), recipient of the Black Creative Endeavours Grant (2020) and was the inaugural Curatorial and Art Writing Fellow at New Local Space Kingston (2019), which interrogated the line between art and craft and questioned “who can be called an artist” and “how do we assign value to works”.

Rosie Gordon-Wallace is a recognized curator, arts advocate, community leader, and pioneer in advancing contemporary diaspora art. She founded the Diaspora Vibe Culture Arts Incubator (DVCAI) to serve as a local and global laboratory dedicated to promoting, nurturing and cultivating the vision and diverse talents of emerging artists from the Caribbean Diaspora, artists of color, and immigrant artists. Twenty-five years later, DVCAI is recognized as a global resource and one of the region’s leading platforms dedicated to providing diaspora artists with a venue to explore and experiment with new forms and themes that challenge traditional definitions of Caribbean and Latin American art. DVCAI artists have traveled and engaged in conversations with artists in France, Barbados, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, Antigua, Suriname, and Guadeloupe. In addition to her service on several prominent boards, she is an active member of the PAMM Fund for African American Art and serves on The Cultural Affairs Council for Miami Dade County and Florida’s Department of Cultural Affairs panels. Her awards include The African Heritage Cultural Arts Center Third Annual Calabash Amadlozi Visual Arts Award, International Businesswoman of the Year, and one of South Florida’s 50 Most Powerful Black Professionals.