About the South Florida Cultural Consortium

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This year’s South Florida Cultural Consortium exhibition presents fourteen artists and one artist collaborative working across textile, painting, ceramic, photographic, sculptural, and time-based media. Each artist’s practice investigates the formation of identity through processes of accumulation, translation, and transformation, revealing how personal histories intersect with broader cultural and ecological narratives.

Opening with Nina Surel’s Demeter, Birth of Florida, a reimagining of the state through a generative divine feminine and closing with Lauren Shapiro’s Storm at Sea and Onajide Shabaka’s Poiesis Jaguar, both of which reflect on humanity’s relationship to the natural order, the exhibition resists a linear framework. Instead, it proposes a cyclical understanding of time, wherein memory, identity, and place are continually negotiated and reshaped.

Across this arc, the artists engage with thresholds, transitional spaces, and shifting geographies as sites of emergence, transformation, and interdependence. The works presented situate themselves comfortably within the unknown, embodying a continuum through which ideas and histories are carried forward, reimagined, and brought into being again and again.

Established in 1988, The South Florida Cultural Consortium is a regional initiative in support of the arts, governed by an Interlocal Agreement among the counties of Broward, Martin, Miami-Dade, Monroe, and Palm Beach. The Consortium’s members are the local arts agencies of these five counties, including the Broward County Cultural Division, the Arts Council of Martin County, the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs, the Florida Keys Council of the Arts, and the Cultural Council for Palm Beach County.

The Consortium works to foster cooperation across the South Florida region to help develop and promote the work of cultural organizations and artists and the audiences that they serve. Its programs and services range from the Visual and Media Artists Grant Program to regional arts education and cultural tourism cooperative ventures. Each year, more than 300 artists who live and work throughout the five counties, submit their applications for consideration to the South Florida Cultural Consortium’s Grant Program for Visual and Media Artists.

Regional and national panels comprised of experts in visual art, film, and media from a variety of academic and major visual arts institutions are given the responsibility of recommending the final recipients. The South Florida Cultural Consortium is one of the most successful regional arts alliances in the nation, demonstrating that by sharing resources and best practices, the arts can thrive across a burgeoning five-county area.

The South Florida Cultural Consortium is made possible with major support from the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs and the Cultural Affairs Council, the Miami-Dade County Mayor and Board of County Commissioners, and the Boards of County Commissioners of The Broward County Cultural Division, The Cultural Council for Palm Beach County, The Arts Council of Martin County, and the Florida Keys Council of the Arts.

Artists interested in learning about grant opportunities through the South Florida Cultural Consortium should visit Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs, Art in Public Places.  

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South Florida Cultural Consortium Members

‍Ashlee Thomas

Chair, South Florida Cultural Consortium

Interim Director, Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs

Philip Dunlap

Director, Broward Cultural Division

Elizabeth S. Young

Executive Director, Florida Keys Council of the Arts

Dave Lawrence

President and CEO, Cultural Council for Palm Beach County

Nancy Turrell

Executive Director, The Arts Council, Martin County

Amanda Sanfilippo Long

Director, South Florida Cultural Consortium  

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About Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs

The Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs and the Cultural Affairs Council develop cultural excellence, diversity, access and participation throughout Miami-Dade County by strategically creating and promoting equitable opportunities for artists and cultural organizations, and our residents and visitors who are their audiences. Through staff, board and programmatic resources, the Department, the Council and the Trust promote, coordinate and support Miami-Dade County’s more than 1,000 nonprofit cultural organizations as well as thousands of resident artists through grants, technical assistance, public information and interactive community planning. The Department directs the Art in Public Places program and serves its board, the Art in Public Places Trust, commissioning, curating, maintaining and promoting the County’s art collection. The Department also manages, programs and operates the African Heritage Cultural Arts Center, Dennis C. Moss Cultural Arts Center, Joseph Caleb Auditorium, and Miami-Dade County Auditorium, all dedicated to presenting and supporting excellence in the arts for the entire community. The Department receives funding through the Miami-Dade County Mayor and Board of County Commissioners, The Children’s Trust, the National Endowment for the Arts, the State of Florida through the Florida Department of State, Florida Division of Arts and Culture and the Florida Council on Arts and Culture, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Peacock Foundation, Inc., The Jorge M. Pérez Family Foundation at The Miami Foundation, and the Taft Foundation. Other support and services are provided by TicketWeb for the Culture Shock Miami program, the Greater Miami Convention and Visitors Bureau, the South Florida Cultural Consortium and the Tourist Development Council.

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Regional Jurors

Taniya Deravile

Director of Arts Administration and Community Engagement I FAT Village Arts District Inc (Broward County)

Gabino A. Castelán‍

Artist

SFCC Grantee Alumnae (Palm Beach County)

Tola Porter‍

Ph.D, Museum Educator for Academic and Public Programs Lowe Art Museum | University of Miami (Miami-Dade County)

Laura Novoa‍

Former Assistant Director of Programs + Community Engagement, Bakehouse Art Complex (Miami-Dade County)

Lauren Baccus‍

Director of Education, MOCA North Miami, (Miami-Dade County)

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National Jurors

Sarah Cartwright‍

Chief Curator and Ulla R. Searing Curator of Collections, The Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, FL

Jazmine Catasus‍

Artistic Director / Master Printer, The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, New York, NY

Jasper A. Sanchez‍

Assistant Curator, Boston Public Art Triennial, Boston, MA.

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Imaj Kredi: 

MANUELA GONZÁLEZ. Luz de Luna, 2025

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Installation photos: Zachary Balber