Creating an artist-centered ecosystem with Rosie Gordon-Wallace and DVCAI –
Through Diaspora Vibes Cultural Arts Incubator, Gordon-Wallace has spent 30 years nurturing Caribbean artists and creative communities

Founded in 1996 in the living room of Gordon-Wallace’s home in Miami’s Morningside neighborhood, DVCAI emerged as a gathering space for Caribbean artists seeking community, critique and visibility within Miami-Dade County. Nearly thirty years later, Gordon-Wallace and the organization she built remain steadfast in supporting Caribbean artists across the region, offering platforms for exchange, professional development and global engagement.

Born and raised in Kingston, Jamaica, Gordon-Wallace –– the youngest of three daughters –– grew up in a scholarly household shaped by her mother’s work as an educator and her father’s career in accounting at the University of the West Indies. Early exposure to the value of knowledge guided her academic path: she became a microbiology technologist and researcher  at the University Hospital of the West Indies before relocating to Miami in 1979. Under the mentorship of Dr. Thomas Hoffman at the University of Miami, she began her career in infectious disease research at the Rosenstiel Medical Science School and as a microbiology technologist at Jackson Memorial Hospital before later working as a pharmaceutical representative for Searle Pharmaceutical.

Through her community service, Gordon-Wallace volunteered at Design and Architecture Senior High School (DASH), where she met young artists — many close in age to her son, Gordon — who left Miami after graduation to attend prestigious art schools and later returned home. Although they came back with sharpened skills and broader perspectives, many struggled to reintegrate into Miami’s emerging arts ecosystem.

Seeing that these artists were faced with limited opportunities to show work or receive meaningful feedback from local galleries, Gordon-Wallace recognized the need for a dedicated space where Caribbean artists could convene, exchange critiques, and support one another. The informal gatherings began with five local artists and soon evolved into a long-term commitment to nurturing Caribbean art in Miami-Dade County.

After securing studio space in the 1990s at the Bakehouse Art Complex — a 1920s bakery transformed into an artist studio complex in 1985 — Gordon-Wallace launched Final Fridays, a recurring monthly event that created a vital third space for Caribbean artists.

“Nurturing this diversity was really meaningful in developing a voice and developing validation for the creativity that they wanted to share with the community,” said Gordon-Wallace. “I would charge $15, and you’d get a full Caribbean meal. My mom (Mama G) was alive, and she would cook. My husband would come from work, we would set up, and folks would come and be exposed to contemporary art, live music, and spoken word. It was almost as if I was creating a menu where you would be fooled into coming for entertainment and then see these experimental ideas that the artists had.”

There, artists could share work, be heard, and navigate the complexities of diasporic identity while practicing on the mainland, far from their island roots. DVCAI officially became a 501(c)(3) nonprofit in 2003, the same year Gordon-Wallace left the pharmaceutical industry to lead the organization full-time.

“I always say that my curatorial practice is an apprentice practice that was honed over time by being able to tell the stories that I know, to being able to stretch my imagination and experimentation. Having all of those ideas and desires embedded in Caribbean culture. I’m so passionate about the work, because in thirty years, I’ve been able to not only see the results of the work and experience the results of the work, but to watch these lives, these young, twenty-something-year-olds who are now fifty.” Said Gordon-Wallace.

“The ones who were not embedded in a commercial space. The ones who had the disappointment of not having gallery representation, the ones who didn’t have the opportunities in museums, and [we] have now watched them grow now to have really rich lives. Seeing many careers blossom over the years — Asser Saint-Val, Hank Willis Thomas, Torkwase Dyson — local and international artists have done really well with us. It really just started with filling a need.”

Travel has remained central to her philosophy. During a Commissioner-sponsored trip to Montreal in the summer of 2023, I witnessed Gordon-Wallace’s genuine curiosity during studio visits and tours of leading arts organizations, paired with a frank acknowledgment of the material realities artists face. The concerns guiding her work today echo those from DVCAI’s earliest years: access to affordable studio space and the ability for artists to sustain themselves both physically and mentally.

“We’re a small organization, a small team led by three. I constantly ask the question, ‘Who are we serving? Why are we doing this work?” Said Gordon-Wallace, “The definition of success is embedded in the lives of the artists who we serve, and when I watched them do their first solo exhibitions, such as Roscoe B. Thicke III. Having a writer come in and write about the show, having a critical analysis of the work, selling a piece of work, being able to nourish themselves and being invited to show your work in another space, in a museum, or at an art fair. All of those things are what I would say are markers of independent growth and success in the artists DVCAI serves and has served.”

This commitment to immersion beyond one’s own borders is reflected in DVCAI’s cross-cultural exchange residencies. Beginning in Paris in 1999, these exchanges have taken place annually in locations ranging from Grenada to Aruba and continue today through DVCAI’s artist-in-residence program in Paramaribo, Suriname.

For Gordon-Wallace, an ever-growing list of awards, honors, and grants signals not individual achievement but collective belonging. She is a villager in a village that continues to welcome her presence.

“This work is not casual for me. This work is as important as the years I spent learning to become a visual microbiologist, because my microbiology career taught me to see,” Gordon-Wallace said.

As DVCAI enters its thirtieth year, the organization is marking the milestone with a collective exhibition currently on view at Monsignor William Barry Memorial Library at Barry University. Co-curated by Gordon-Wallace, the exhibition reflects on containers and ports as conduits of memory –– apt metaphors for diasporic movement and cultural transmission.

“The crux of the matter is, where is home? Where do you think of as home?” She says. “Edwidge Danticat says, and I quote her frequently, as best as I can, that ‘when you start burying your family members, your ancestors in a place, that place takes on a new definition.’ It’s a very complicated question. For immigrants, there is a love for their nationhood. There is a love for your birthplace, your certificate, and then there is an aching for your homestead, where you pay your mortgage and your taxes. I see the challenge, but I also see the joy.”

Isabella “Isa” Marie Garcia is an interdisciplinary lens-based artist, writer, and educator living in her native Miami, Florida. Interested in alternative educational spaces, holistic aftercare, and supporting visual artists in the American South in her practice, Garcia is a recipient of a 2025 Oolite Arts Ellies Creator Award and the 2024 WOPHA Research Fellowship for The Photography Care Matrix: Teaching Traditional and Experimental Photo Techniques within Prison Environments, Residential Rehabs, and Alternative Schools, a 2024 Visual Aids Research Fellowship, and a 2023 Locust Projects Wavemaker Research and Implementation Grant Recipient for What Happens When the Dust Settles?. Her writing can be found in publications such as Islandia Journal, Queue Magazine, The Fountainhead 2024 and 2025 Yearbook, Prism,  Contemporary  And  América Latina, On  /  Off-Shore:  Poets  of  the  Caribbean  and  Caribbean  Diaspora, The  Art Newspaper, Miami New Times, So to Speak: A feminist journal of language and art, and Burnaway, where she works as their editorial assistant. More information on her practice can be found at https://isamxrie.com/about.