Locust Projects is excited to reveal its 2022 WaveMaker Grant awardees. Selected through an open call process by a team of local and national artists and arts professionals, twelve visionary artists and artist collectives will receive up to $6,000 each to create innovative work that will be shared with the public across Miami in non-traditional venues and platforms.

The 2022 WaveMakers are:

New Work / Projects:

Trae DeLellis & Juan Barquin:
The Bitter Tears of South Florida Queers is a one-night, multidisciplinary celebration of queer cinema, design, and performance. Hosted by Flaming Classics, the evening commences with a 50th anniversary screening of The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant, which remains a touchstone of queer cinema. A fashion show inspired by the film and its characters will follow, spotlighting garments created by local queer designers and modeled by local drag artists.

Pamela Largaespada:
Guerrillera is a short film about a sex worker whose child is taken from her due to a false accusation and the case worker assigned to them. In collaboration with sex workers and using elements of surrealism, Guerrillera is an overdue positive representation of sex work and motherhood.

Phil Lique:
At the center of an immersive deli environment with food-themed wallpaper, deli posters, butcher paper, and more, artworks are displayed in a deli case and sold in increments, cut by a band saw, paper slicer, hammer, scissors, blender, or other tools. Using performativity, chance, and humor, artDeli shifts the commodity of art collecting out of the gallery and into a context more familiar and accessible to the general public.

Julian Montalvo &  Fredo Rivera:
island bound: an exercise in decolonizing drag is a collaborative performance project by artists KUNST (Julian Montalvo) and Lolita Cabrón (Fredo Rivera) exploring decoloniality in a specially Puerto Rican context. Drawing from historical archives, cartography, the built environment, soundscapes, and contemporary visual cultures of the “postcolonial colony,” the durational performance, which uses sculptural installation to visualize Puerto Rico and its diaspora, will provide an intimate and dramatic rendering of queer resistance in realtion to coloniality.

Terence Price II:
This experimental short documentary aims to use archive images and footage to tell the story of finding and meeting Price II’s grandmother Susana White, his father’s long-last mother, after 53 years. This story of perseverance and love is meant to propel folks to continue searching. This project also shines a light on the many stories from black, indigenous and people of color that are missing and how family agencies are failing to provide information to help uphold these histories so that loved once can continue to search.

Roscoè B. Thické III:
Fabrication of Fatherhood is an intimate study of the myths, stereotypes, perceptions, and truths of fatherhood in the Black community. Beginning with conversations about the role fathers have played in their lives, collaborators will be invited to offer materials connected to their memories or thoughts of fatherhood. They will then participate in a photography session guided by the conversations to capture how Black fatherhood feels to them. The photographs and materials will be shared in a space created by a father for fathers.

Long-Haul Projects:

Loni Johnson:
What We Hold Sacred invites guests to use meaningful objects–such as photographs, memorabilia, crystals, jewelry, and more–to build small altars as offerings to their ancestors. Participants will be guided to reflect on how we claim, navigate, and hold space; how ancestral and historical memory informs where, when and how we occupy spaces; and how we carry and honor our ancestors in the spaces we move through. the workshops offer Black women and girls a shared space of healing and rest while they are visible and validated.

Monica Uszerowicz:
Are  you dreaming of water rising? Dreaming as the Water Rises is a living archive of the sea-level rise and water dreams of Florida residents. These dreams might constitute data, a record of the subconscious, shaped by our shared experience of climate change. Perhaps they can also act as calls to action, from deep in our psyches, to care for the planet and imagine new possibilities for the future. Dreaming as the Water Rises will culminate in a presentation of the multilingual, virtual archive; an essay; and a collaborative zine.

Research & Development + Implementation:

Liz Ferrer & Bow Ty:
Written in the style of melodramatic telenovelas, camp comedies, and reality TV shows [Cries in Spanish] is an episodic series highlighting the variety of fem Latinx experiences through individual narratives. Using animation, digital backgrounds, and framing analysis, and designed for accessibility, [Cries in Spanish] blends real and fictional stories in English and Spanish. The series follows displaced fems and queer people as they deal with various issues, from familiar struggles with language and immigration status to lesser discussed complications that appear at the intersection of queer Latinx identity.

A.G.:
Modelled after the United States Army’s longstanding practice of classified intelligence debriefing, Queer Strategy and Tactics is a performative lecture presenting solution-based ideas for queer-identifying people navigating within a normative regime. Subverting concepts found in theatrical trainging–character development, art-direction, production tradecraft, set design, costume, hair & make-up, partner-work, and much more–Queer Strategy & tactics offers a set of conceptual tolls for practical approaches to the limitless potential of bodies, preferences, and styles of living.

Monica Sorelle:
Linking intimate family moments to the Caribbean diaspora at large, Transfer is a video project relating the transfer of physical media into digital data to the passing down of nostalgia, folklore, trauma, and genetic memory from family and community members by utilizing home movies, video projection mapping, and the degradation of media otherwise known as generation loss.

Ema Ri:
After researching local flowers as sculptural materials, Here With  You culminates in a large-scale flower bed where people lay over the silhouettes of bodies imprinted in the bed by those who visited the immersive sculpture before them. The work is experienced with all senses and invites a moment of healing and grounding.

The 2022 WaveMakers were selected by Chire Regans (VantaBlack), Miami-based artist and community activist and recipient of the Oolite Arts’ Ellies Social Justice Award in 2021; Summer Jade Leavitt, director of The Queer Theory Library,  Curatorial and Cultural Programs Associate at Deering Estate and 2021 WaveMaker awardee for The Queer Theory Library; and Michael Linares Vazquez, Puerto Rico-based artist and Co-director of Beta Local, a San Juan nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting and promoting aesthetic thought and practice through programs and projects.