Installation image, “Calida Rawls: Away with the Tides” at Spelman College Museum of Fine Art.<\/p>\n
Mike Jensen SCMFA<\/p>\n
Cuban sandwiches. Ventanitas<\/a>. Calle Ocho<\/a>. Little Havana. Little Haiti. Gloria Estefan. Pitbull.<\/p>\n Miami\u2019s Caribbean and Latin influences are recognized globally and celebrated locally.<\/p>\n Miami is a Black city too. <\/p>\n And Indigenous, for that matter; another story for another day<\/a>.<\/p>\n Miami\u2019s African American roots have largely been obscured. Purposefully. To find them, you have to know where to look: Hampton House Hotel<\/a>, Virginia Key Beach<\/a>, Purvis Young<\/a>, Arthur McDuffie<\/a>.<\/p>\n Overtown<\/a>.<\/p>\n When the P\u00e9rez Art Museum Miami invited Calida Rawls (b. 1976) to produce an exhibition aimed at attracting the city\u2019s African American residents, the project began as site-specific. <\/p>\n \u201cWhere do Black people live in Miami, and what is the history of Black people in Miami,\u201d Rawls explained to me of her initial inquiry when first undertaking the project in late 2022. \u201cI do not readily think of Black people (when I think of Miami). I think of Cubans. I think of different minority groups, but I did not think of Black people.\u201d<\/p>\n Most don\u2019t.<\/p>\n The more Rawls researched Miami\u2019s Black past, the more she found a state-wide story, a national story, and an international story. For Rawls\u2019 purposes, that story begins in Overtown.<\/p>\n Overtown<\/p>\n Installation image, “Calida Rawls: Away with the Tides” at Spelman College Museum of Fine Art.<\/p>\n Mike Jensen SCMFA<\/p>\n Overtown was long Miami\u2019s thriving Black neighborhood. Some 50,000 residents lived there along with countless Black-owned businesses, churches and schools. Then came Interstate 95 in the 1960s. Property was snatched up by eminent domain. A concrete stake was driving through the heart of the community. The highway bisected Overtown. Straight through it. On purpose. Segregation by design<\/a>.<\/p>\n Over 12,000 residents were forcibly relocated. Almost all were Black. <\/p>\n Their business and churches and schools likewise went away.<\/p>\n It happened across the country in nearly every major city: urban renewal. Perhaps the most devastating, long-lasting, nationwide, permanent, now nearly invisible example of systemic racism continuing to suppress African American upward mobility in the United States. There was Rawls\u2019 national story with a Miami hook.<\/p>\n \u201cI started thinking of what else do I not know about Miami when I was doing that research and it was a lot about Overtown, and how it was a thriving community, and then when the Federal Highway Act by (President Dwight) Eisenhower was put into place it went from like 50,000 to now 10,000 people \u2013destroyed it,\u201d Rawls explained. \u201c(City officials) always try to say it was blight, but (Overtown) was thriving. It was just a racial excuse. I was thinking about that, and I wanted to give a visual of Black people are in Miami.\u201d<\/p>\n That visual became \u201cAway with the Tides,\u201d an exhibition debuting at PAMM in the summer of 2024. Rawls began with a series of preliminary photoshoots in Virginia Key Beach and the public pool at Theodore Gibson Park Overtown. These informed the subject matter for her lifelike paintings. Ranging from a 10-month-old baby to senior citizens, the portraits provide representation for those who call Overtown home while capturing the generational shift the community has undergone and giving shape to an American experience often overlooked. <\/p>\n With residents as the subjects of her paintings, it became evident that the exhibition would be a transformative experience. For some, their first time at a museum.<\/p>\n \u201cThere was one guy, Marquise. He had worked at the kitchen of the museum at one time and he was saying whoever the director was or whoever was boss at the time wouldn’t allow them to go into the gallery spaces,\u201d Rawls remembers of one of her models. \u201cThey had to come in through the back. I was like, “Well, now you are on the wall!\u201d He brought his children; it was very emotional.\u201d<\/p>\n What did these Black Miamians think about Overtown going up on the walls at PAMM?<\/p>\n \u201cI don’t think they know about it. I think they live it. A lot of people, when I was telling them what Overtown was, I don’t think a lot of them knew,\u201d Rawls said. \u201cThey definitely don’t. So many people from Miami, especially those at Overtown, were so thankful because they were like, “I didn’t even know,\u201d and they were bringing their family members.\u201d<\/p>\n How is this possible?<\/p>\n After erasing the community, Miami went on to erase its history and memory.<\/p>\n That begins in the schools. What is taught and what is not.<\/p>\n \u201cThey want to say it’s like this, and you blame whatever’s happening in communities to that community, as if it just happened out of nowhere. It’s just the people rather than a systemic issue,\u201d Rawls said. \u201cIt’s easier, and it gets people to not think of why. No one likes to ask why. It’s just this is what it is, and there’s nothing more to that. That’s where it’s dangerous. People won’t think further.\u201d<\/p>\n Rawls found chilling contemporary examples of African American erasure while researching \u201cAway with the Tides.\u201d Here was the Florida story.<\/p>\n \u201cI was thinking of how AP Black History wasn\u2019t going to be taught or accepted (in Florida). What do Black people feel in Miami? I never saw anyone write about that. I never saw the voice when they\u2019re deciding that your history can\u2019t be taught at the school\u2013a whole group\u2013no reporters, or I never saw a national story anyway detailing how the community feels about that.\u201d<\/p>\n In 2023, under the direction of right wing ideologue Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, the state\u2019s education department banned its Advanced Placement course in Black history after determining it lacked \u201ceducational value and historical accuracy.\u201d<\/a> This from the same governor and board of education that would later in 2023 update public school history curriculum statewide to assert that Black people benefitted from slavery in certain aspects.<\/a> <\/p>\n \u201cIt gave me excuse to try to dig up some Black history that would not be taught in the schools, and then also I saw the governor at the time saying he was upset with (President Joe) Biden’s Highway Act,\u201d Rawls remembers. \u201c(DeSantis) was saying of how highways can’t be racist, and I remember thinking, \u2018Oh yes, they can.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Most of the United States\u2019 first generation urban interstates were racist highways based on where they were routed, who made those decisions, and why.<\/p>\n Florida\u2019s ban on AP Black History was ultimately overturned by a federal judge<\/a>. A wider attempt at formally entrenching white nationalism, misogyny, and heteronormative sexuality in the state\u2019s colleges attempted by the governor was overturned in federal court earlier this month.<\/a> Prefiguring what would come under the second Trump regime<\/a>, Republicans in Florida have taken on erasing Black history as a primary objective.<\/p>\n The Weight Of Water<\/p>\n Installation image, “Calida Rawls: Away with the Tides” at Spelman College Museum of Fine Art.<\/p>\n Mike Jensen SCMFA<\/p>\n Rawls had found her Florida story and national story in Miami, the international story was right there as well. Virginia Key Beach. The Gibson pool. Water.<\/p>\n \u201cWater connects every region of the world. It connects us all. We\u2019re all made of water, and then the Black experience with the Middle Passage, and even the stereotypes that we can\u2019t swim\u2013and what that does\u2013and segregation laws that prevent us to learn how to swim, and access pools. It goes deep on so many levels that I could use with water,\u201d Rawls said. \u201cIt\u2019s a great element to keep displaying and using as a part of my visual language because it’s vast, in every culture\u2013all the lands are connected by that one thing. It binds us.\u201d<\/p>\n Rawls\u2019 recent paintings utilize water as a vital, organic, and multifaceted element as well as a historically charged space representing racial exclusion and individual healing.<\/p>\n \u201cBlack bodies float in exquisitely rendered submarine landscapes of bubbles, ripples, refracted light and expanses of blue,\u201d as the artist\u2019s website adeptly describes<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cAway with Tides\u201d concludes its national tour at the Spelman College Museum of Fine Art<\/a> in Atlanta through September 5, 2026. Rawls is a Spelman alumna. Founded in 1881, Spelman College is a leading liberal arts college widely recognized as the global leader in the education of women of African descent.<\/p>\n Spelman\u2019s art museum celebrates its 30th anniversary in 2026 and is the only museum in the nation dedicated to art by and about women of the African diaspora.<\/p>\n More From ForbesForbesA Summer Of Black Excellence On Stage And ScreenBy Chadd Scott<\/a>ForbesLouisville\u2019s E&S Gallery, The Nation\u2019s Oldest And Largest African American Owned Fine Art GalleryBy Chadd Scott<\/a>ForbesTavares Strachan Brings Caribbean Rum Bar & Cafe To Columbus, OHBy Chadd Scott<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Installation image, “Calida Rawls: Away with the Tides” at Spelman College Museum of Fine Art. Mike Jensen SCMFA…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":348749,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[695,142745,123,125,124],"class_list":["post-348748","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-miami","tag-black","tag-calida-rawls","tag-miami","tag-miami-headlines","tag-miami-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348748","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=348748"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348748\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/348749"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=348748"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=348748"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=348748"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}