A Case for Listening and Collaboration
This timeline follows our journey with commissioned artists Chire VantaBlack Regans and Loni Johnson to illustrate the opportunities that emerge when we commit long-term to listening and collaboration. It paints the picture of a relay exercise, with each of us playing a part to build on the work of the other.
As you read, we invite you to look for the names of collaborators and stories of interconnection. Then, consider an artist that YOU feel connected to, and how their work has inspired a ripple of conversations and experiences in your life.
Artist Chire VantaBlack Regans’ art practice exists at the intersection of social justice and storytelling. Over the past decade, her work has focused primarily on community advocacy and depicting social narratives without distortion across a variety of mediums. As a Saint Louis native, the birth of the Black Lives Matter movement triggered a sense of urgency in her art practice and it has continued to expand, allowing for a wider range of social accessibility and creative scale. Chire is a Commissioner Season Three Artist.
Loni Johnson is a multi-disciplinary visual artist born and raised in Miami. As an artist, educator, mother, and activist, Loni understands that as artists, there is a cyclical obligation to give back and nurture our communities with her creative gift and it must be utilized to better our world. Through movement and ritual, she creates healing spaces for Black women and explores how ancestral and historical memory informs how, when and where one enters and claim spaces. Loni is a Commissioner Season Six Artist.
How it started
February 2020
Chire VantaBlack Regans applies for the inaugural artist residency program with Community Justice Project. During adjudications, she presents a portfolio of portraits depicting victims of gun violence with dignity and honor. She explains her process of first speaking with families of victims, and working with them to identify an image that captures who they were—and not how they died. Weeks later, the CDC declares a state of emergency at the onset of the novel coronavirus.
“Gun violence affects us all and it’s our responsibility to address it however we can. ”
August 2020
Six months after meeting Chire VantaBlack Regans in February, the landscape has shifted dramatically. People around the world are grappling with the devastating ongoing effects of COVID-19 and police violence.
Chire is interviewed by Community Justice Project fellow Madhulika Murali about her portrait of George Floyd, and the responsibility she feels as an artist, for our limited storytelling series When We Talk. This series invites movement lawyers, organizers, and writers to interview artists across disciplines. Here’s the article.
May 2021
As a follow-up and call for action, we commission Chire VantaBlack Regans’s A Reflection of the Times—a memorial exhibition honoring victims of gun violence on the one-year anniversary of the murder of George Floyd.
A Reflection of the Times is curated by Anita Sharma and supported by Chire’s alma mater New World School of the Arts with Mitchell Wolfson Sr Foundation. It remains on view for six months at Bakehouse Art Complex, and includes educational programming, action items, and conversations that center victims of gun and state violence, and the impact on families and communities. See the photos, and read the catalog with a foreword by Pérez Art Museum Miami Director Franklin Sirmans.
Mothers Tanya Young Fincher and Queen Brown at Reflection of the Times. Photo by Gesi Schilling.
New World School of the Arts high school students visit exhibitions by Chire Regans at Bakehouse Art Complex. Photo by Monica McGivern.
November 2021
We work with educators to organize a field trip for New World School of the Arts high school students to visit Chire VantaBlack Regans’s exhibition, A Reflection of the Times, and her monumental public mural, Say Their Names, at Bakehouse Art Complex. See the photos and learn more about our partnership with NWSA.
December 2021
Chire VantaBlack Regans invites frequent collaborator and multidisciplinary artist Loni Johnson to present 3:33 | A Procession (reprise), creating a space for community members to gather and for healing.
May 2022
Following the release of documentation of 3:33 | A Procession (reprise)—a short video made with care and intentionality by Juan Luis Matos and Monica Sorelle—we begin thinking more deeply of ways to uplift the social practice of artists, and pitch ideas to journalists, scholars, and filmmakers.
At the recommendation of community historian Nadege Green, we contact Dr. Jafari Allen and Dr. Donette Francis at University of Miami’s Center for Global Black Studies for their support.
Chire VantaBlack Regans in More Than What Happened: The Aftermath of Gun Violence, edited by Nadege Green.
November 2022
Inspired by our collaboration with Chire VantaBlack Regans and Loni Johnson, New World School of the Arts Dean of Visual Arts O. Gustavo Plascencia invites them and fellow NWSA alumna Chris Friday to present the group exhibition The Front Room in the New World Gallery. The exhibition is curated by Zee Lopez del Carmen. See the photos and read the essay on Comfort and Care by Anita Sharma.
Also in November 2022
”More Than What Happened: The Aftermath of Gun Violence,” edited with an introduction by Nadege Green, is published by O, Miami. In this anthology, poems, photographs, interviews, portraits, and illustrations are used to talk about how Miamians survive, grieve, and process the loss of children, parents, and friends. The anthology features the work of Chire VantaBlack Regans and her mural Say Their Names.
December 2022
Those outreach efforts begin to bear fruit. Chire VantaBlack Regans and Loni Johnson are featured in the article Practicing Ascension: African and Afro-Caribbean Reverence in Art and Performance in Art in America, written by Miami-based writer Monica Uszerowicz. This helps position their work within a broader contemporary art conversation and shares their practice with thousands of readers. Read the article.
January 2023
In celebration of The Front Room exhibit, PBS South Florida launches its 11th season of Art Loft onsite at the New World Gallery and screens our short film with Chire VantaBlack Regans, Loni Johnson and Chris Friday as its season premiere, “Creating Space.” The screening is followed by a community conversation under the stars at the New World School of the Arts campus, and acknowledges the storytelling contribution of Juan Luis Matos of Preguntas Studio as the filmmaker.
May 2023
Sparked by outreach the year prior, which sought to create learning around the social practices of Miami-based artists such as ChireVantaBlack Regans and Loni Johnson, Dr. Donette Francis of University of Miami’s Center for Global Black Studies secures funding and leads the monumental effort to gather and build scholarship around the work of Black artists in Miami. And so our season-long partnership with CGBS begins.
September 2023
Thirty artists and curators participate in the inaugural symposium Still Here: Generations of Black Miami Artmaking, organized by Dr. Donette Francis of University of Miami’s Center for Global Black Studies, and presented in collaboration with Commissioner with support by Mellon and Terra foundations.
Launching the Still Here two-day symposium, the Center for Global Black Studies and Commissioner commission GeoVanna Gonzalez to create a new iteration of her ongoing series incorporating movement, architecture, and site. Play, Lay, Aye: Act 5 is performed at Soho Pool House in Edgewater at a family-style dinner hosted in collaboration with Untitled Art Fair. GeoVanna is also a Commissioner Season Three Artist. Here’s how it came together.
December 2023
Expanding upon the opening performance by GeoVanna Gonzalez at Still Here: Generations of Black Miami Artmaking, we again partner with Untitled Art Fair to present the next iteration of GeoVanna’s work, Play, Lay, Aye: Act 6 on the sands of Ocean Drive during Miami Art Week. The event is free and open for everyone, followed by a reception inside the tent overlooking the ocean. See the photos.
Play, Lay, Aye: Act 6 by GeoVanna Gonzalez at Untitled Art, Miami Beach. Photo by Chantal Lawrie.
Bridge Deconstruction: Loni Johnson 5:31 Sundown Procession at the Wolfsonian-FIU Museum, Miami Beach. Photo by Diana Larrea.
Also in December 2023
Loni Johnson presents 5:31 Sundown Procession, in partnership with misael soto’s ’s Bridge Deconstruction project at the Wolfsonian-FIU Museum in Miami Beach.
”’Sundown town’ laws turned the bridges themselves into a site of nightly displacement, and Miami Beach still has a disproportionately small Black community and a reputation for police violence that has increased recently due to new laws criminalizing homelessness on the Beach. Loni’s 5:31: Sundown Procession and altar honored the pain and division that these bridges represented as segregators between the white world of Miami Beach and the communities of color in Miami.” Read the full article in Burnaway.
This project with misael, who is also a Season Five Artist, would come to inform Loni’s later performances with University of Miami’s Center of Global Black Studies and Commissioner.
February 2024
Inspired by Still Here: Generations of Black Miami Artmaking, artist Juana Valdés and scholar Nhadya Lawes co-curate As We Move Forward at the Augusta Savage Gallery at UMass in Amherst, where Juana is an educator. The exhibit features the work of 17 women artists in South Florida, including Chire VantaBlack Regans, Loni Johnson, Chris Friday, and GeoVanna Gonzalez. Juana is also a Commissioner Season Four Artist.
May 2024
Coinciding with the anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, Dr. Donette Francis of University of Miami’s Center for Global Black Studies and Dr. Mysia Anderson-Hall of the University of California, San Diego present Theorizing Black Miami: Histories, Movements and Ethics of Care, in collaboration with Commissioner. The convening is held at the UM Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science at Virginia Key Beach, and examines the social practice of commissioned artist Loni Johnson and filmmaker Faren Humes.
Speakers and artists of Theorizing Black Miami: Histories, Movements and Ethics of Care at The Cleat, Bill Baggs Cape Florida State Park. Photo by Chantal Lawrie.
Umbrellas “How to Patch a Leaky Roof” by Michelle Lisa Polissaint and Najja Moon, originally commissioned by O’Miami, are gifted to participating speakers and artists. Michelle is a Commissioner Season Five Artist. Read the newsletter by Dr. Mysia Anderson-Hall.
June 2024
A capstone to our ongoing conversation and collaboration, Loni Johnson is the final commissioned artist of Season Six. We celebrate with a community block party at Locust Projects in Little Haiti, where 40 Collector members receive a sculpture from Loni in a tender performance about belonging and feeling seen. The works are from her Visceral series. Here are more photos. Scroll for the video.
How it’s going
Here, we see what’s possible when artists lead, and the ecosystem of support that is required to amplify their voices, build community, and consider more deeply the issues informing the work. From critical arts writing and video storytelling, to programming with academic institutions and arts organizations, how we choose to collaborate and move ideas forward matters. This is especially meaningful when we consider that it is we—a group of individuals who share a common desire to uplift the arts in our city and in our respective lives—who are tipping the scale. It’s the difference between going fast alone vs. going far, together.
Over the course of four years, we have followed Chire VantaBlack Regans and Loni Johnson, and have participated in their social practices in various capacities along the way. While Commissioner’s support has included funding via commissions, this timeline demonstrates the catalytic power of activating networks and relationships that are mission and values-aligned. It also reminds us to look for partnership at every juncture, and to find common ground across disciplines and geographies.
As we consider what’s next, memory-keeping and stewardship show up as necessary strategies to resist erasure and to shift from intention to impact. Our commissioning program is a step in that direction. Now that our members—and by extension, alum—are emerging as patrons of a growing number of Miami-based artists through Commissioner, it is our collective responsibility to show up as the stewards, memory keepers, and amplifiers of their stories. And so, we must ask each other—
How are YOU using your social and cultural capital to open more doors for artists in our communities?
Please share your story with us. Email at hello@commissioner.us.