María Elena Ortiz
María Elena Ortiz is curator at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, where she curated Jammie Holmes: Make the Revolution Irresistible (2023) and Surrealism and Us: Caribbean and African Diasporic Artists Since 1940 (2024). She is also a co-curator with Susana Temkin and Rodrigo Moura for the upcoming Triennial at El Museo del Barrio, Flow States (2024). In 2023, she co-curated Puerto Rico NegrX with Marina Reyes Franco. Previously she was curator at the Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM), where she curated group shows Allied with Power: African andAfrican Diaspora Art from the Jorge M. Pérez Collection, The Other Side of Now: Foresight in Caribbean Art, and solo exhibitions with Firelei Báez, Ulla von Brandenburg, william cordova, Teresita Fernández, José Carlos Martinat, Carlos Motta, and Beatriz Santiago Muñoz. At PAMM, she founded the Caribbean Cultural Institute, a curatorial platform dedicated to Caribbean art.
Born in Montserrat and raised in England, Veronica Ryan OBE, RA creates meticulously handcrafted work using a wide range of materials, including bronze, plaster, marble, textile, and found objects. Ryan has examined the psychological implications of history, trauma, and recovery in relation to the broader culture through her sculptures and installations across her four-decade long practice. In 2022, Ryan received the Turner Prize and was included in the Whitney Biennial. On the occasion of her exhibition Unruly Objects at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation, Ryan joined curator María Elena Ortiz for a conversation about the evolution of her practice on the New Social Environment (Episode #1200).
Have you heard of Faustin-Élie Soulouque? Known as Faustin I, he was born into slavery in the French colony of Saint-Domingue. After fighting in the successful Haitian Revolution at the turn of the nineteenth century, he became the last emperor of Haiti from 1849 to 1859.