Commissioner

“A big part of the process for me is about being present.”

A couple weeks ago, we stepped into the studio of Stephen Arboite (Stephen J. Arboite), the fourth and final commissioned artist of Season Eight. In his generosity, he offered a rare glimpse into the rituals and discipline that nurture his profound relationship with presence.

Every cut and tear in Arboite’s practice serves as a portal—an entry into an underlayer, and, by extension, a new pathway. His exploration of pigments, fire, and coffee invites us to reflect more deeply on each element’s properties and their embedded narratives, as well as to consider our own relationships with materiality and meaning-making.

As we approach the crest of the season, and take in all that is ahead, today we’re celebrating artists and our shared community as the memory keepers, stakeholders, and storytellers of our time and place. The practice is to be present.

Members: See you at the finale! ✨

What if “vagabonding” were a strategy—a fluid approach to engineering escape routes from dominant systems?💃🏿

On May 21, , in community with and , hosted Searching for Collective Memory—an embodied program inspired by Sir Issac Julien’s two-channel installation, Vagabondia (2000), during Third Thursdays at .

With ’s Vagabondia as a guide, we brought urgent questions about stewardship, memory, and erasure to life through guided tours, performance interventions, and conversation.

Nina Osoria Ahmadi, Cecilia Benitez, Darryl Brown, Gabri Christa (mentor), Lisa Kusanagi, Arsimmer McCoy, Nicole Pedraza, and Hattie Mae Williams—all performing artists-in-residence with Pioneer Winter Collective’s 2026 Grass Stains program—responded to public artworks surrounding the Miami Beach museum. Unwittingly flirting with the idea of “vagabond” in their very presence as movement artists, they freely intervened and interrupted guided tours led by practitioners (and conspirators) Lauren Baccus, Lauryn Lawrence, and Veronica Pesantes.

In the panel that followed, photographer and scholar Vanessa Charlot, filmmaker Jason Fitzroy Jeffers, writer Lise Ragbir, and moderator Corey Davis of Maven Leadership Collective interrogated the role of institutions in shaping our historical records.

As the conversation unfolded, we found shared language with the protagonists in Julien’s film and, by extension, the site-specific performances with Grass Stains artists and guides. Moving beyond the margins and in a world of one’s own, there is spaciousness for self-determination, self-actualization, and rest.

🫂 Searching for Collective Memory was made possible through Art Bridges Foundation Access for All Program with The Bass, and with community love from ’s Black Miami Weekend. Grateful for thought-partner Maven Leadership Collective, an ideas lab that cultivates ecosystems of support for q***r and trans innovators and creatives of color and allies.