Smithsonian Design Triennial:
Ebb + Flow
Ebb + Flow assembles collective stories and sounds from the Everglades wetlands of South Florida. Organized by Artists in Residence in Everglades (AIRIE), whose residency program has cultivated artists’ perspectives on the National Park since 2001, Ebb + Flow honors the human communities and various ecosystems that have called and continue to call the Everglades their home, considering a worldview that expands beyond the Anthropocene. Including oral histories from preservation advocates such as Daniel Tommie, Dinizulu Gene Tinnie, and Dr. Wallis Tinnie in an environment conceived by AIRIE Alumni Cornelius Tulloch, Germane Barnes, and Christina Pettersson, the installation articulates the cultural and environmental heritage of this essential subtropical ecosystem under threat by urban development and climate crisis.
Artistic direction by Cornelius Tulloch. Sound stations designed by Germane Barnes. Seating designed by Christina Pettersson. Video and audio portraits by Ania Freer. Soundscape installation by Atéha Bailly. Exhibition support and production by Kristina Reinis, Givanete Castillo and Heike Dempster.
Oral histories from artist and organizer Daniel Tommie, artist and organizer Dinizulu Gene Tinnie, and cultural organizer Dr. Wallis Tinnie. Advisory support from the Everglades National Park, Reverend Houston Cypress, Tracey Robertson Carter, Eve Samples, Alan Scott, Jonathan Truppman, Christina Seely, Gavin McKenzie, Dr. Wallis Tinnie, Dinizulu Gene Tinnie, Michelle Wilkinson, Amanda Williams, Christina L. De León, Pedro Ramos, and Reginald Chapple.
This installation was made possible with additional support from the AIRIE Board of Trustees and exhibition donors; T. Robertson Carter & Christopher Carter, Tyler Emerson-Dorsch & Brook Dorsch, Felecia Hatcher-Pearson & Derick Pearson, Grant & Deborah Smith, Gavin & Christy McKenzie, Tatiana Mouarbes, Open Society Foundation, Tile Allemann & Jonathan Truppman, Riyaad Seecharan, Valerie Grace Ricordi & Jay Flynn, Diana Wege, and Wege Foundation.
About the Artists
Atéha Bailly (Jojo Sounds)
Soundscape installation
“Participating in this project for the Smithsonian Design Triennial enabled me to experience the lush and diverse soundscapes of the Everglades all over again. This time, in a much clearer and hopeful headspace. The stories of Wallis, Gene, and Daniel nudged me further into this mindset. Hearing them talk about the Everglades as a sensitive and responsive site for memory made me feel more present in my home; their stories inspired me to appreciate the memories home holds, good and bad, as the foundations for a brighter future.”
Atéha Bailly, known in the music world as Jojo Sounds, weaves a rich tapestry of sound that blends hip hop, indie rock, and dub techno into a unique genre-defying experience. His music reflects the multicultural and multi-generational journey of his family’s immigration from West Africa to the Caribbean/Central America and to the U.S. to uplift across continents. Born in Seattle and raised in central Massachusetts, Bailly’s artistic evolution took him to Portland for his studies at Reed College and later to Harvard Divinity School in Boston, where he focused on the intersection of music with religious, political, and racial identity formation. Bailly's innovative productions combine the storytelling depth of hip-hop with the experimentation of indie rock and the rich, pulsating beats of dub techno. This fusion creates a sonic landscape that transcends traditional genre boundaries, revealing resonances across the various communities of his heritage.
Germane Barnes
Sound Stations Design
“I am excited to be a part of AIRIE’s contribution. Spending time in the Everglades exposed me to topics of slowness, rest, and materiality. The sound stations are inspired by the Freedman lineage of movement and resourcefulness.”
Germane Barnes’ award-winning research and design practice investigates the connection between architecture and identity, examining architecture’s social and political agency through historical research and design speculation. Mining architecture’s social and political agency, he examines how the built environment influences black domesticity. Born in Chicago, IL Germane Barnes received a Bachelor of Science in Architecture from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a Master of Architecture from Woodbury University where he was awarded the Thesis Prize for his project Symbiotic Territories: Architectural Investigations of Race, Identity, and Community.
Ania Freer
Video and audio portraits
“Working on these films and collaborating with musician Atéha Bailey to build rich soundscapes using my field recordings, I now am able to share my personal experience and relationship with the Everglades with a wide audience. I am excited to bring my field recordings and video studies into Cooper Hewitt and allow audiences to hear important stories and experience healing sounds of this very remarkable natural environment.”
Ania Freer is an award-winning Australian-Jamaican artist, filmmaker, cultural researcher, and curator based in New York City and Jamaica. Working in installation, film, and curating, Ania uses oral histories to explore identity through themes of resistance, labor, folklore, craft traditions, race and class. Her films work to disrupt imperialist narratives and recenter marginalized voices. Ania’s video installations have been exhibited at the National Gallery of Jamaica and her short film “Strictly Two Wheel”, won Best Documentary Short at Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival. She has received fellowships and residencies from the Caribbean Film Academy, New Local Space Kingston, Lighthouse Works, Art Omi, Ox-Bow and Artist in Residence in Everglades (AIRIE). She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology and Film Theory from the University of Sydney.
Christina Pettersson
Seating Design
“I highly value my now decade-long relationship with AIRIE and am delighted to see how the organization has grown and that I can continue to be a part of its mission. This project in the Triennial exemplifies their stewardship not only for the Everglades ecosystem itself but the people who remain the beating heart of its unique beauty.”
Christina Pettersson was born in Stockholm, Sweden and grew up in Miami, Florida. Her large-scale drawings, videos, installations, and group performances focus on Florida's hidden histories and environment. Public programming and collaborations have become central to her art practice, carrying her far out of her studio to the origins of these narratives. She is the recipient of a Knight Grant, Wavemaker Grant, Ellies Creator Award twice, Florida Cultural Consortium Fellowship thrice, and is a Fulbright Scholar. She has attended residencies at Everglades National Park, the historic Deering Estate, Studios of Key West, Yaddo and Ucross. She is in the collections of the Perez Art Museum Miami, Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami, Bass Museum of Art, Margulies Collection and the Four Seasons Hotel, among others. She is on a three-month residency in Bergen, Norway, exploring plant history through women’s fertility.
Cornelius Tulloch
Creative Direction
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.
Virtual Exhibit
Video and Audio portraits by Ania Freer
Atéja, Ania, and Germane headshots courtesy of the artist and Christina Pettersson headshot by Monica McGivern.