“Let’s make it ours,” says Isaiah Thomas as he sits on the couch of Roots Collective Blackhouse in the heart of Liberty City, Miami.
His team is in the midst of setting up for their collaborative event, SPEAK, with New Orleans artist KAWD. Roots is a community hub, comprised of a print shop, store front, and marketplace, created to help Black artists and business owners build and collaborate.
SPEAK is held the Friday of Art Basel — the week-long, national attention-garnering art exhibit held each year in South Florida.
Every year in the beginning of December — right when Miami’s weather is finally dropping a few degrees — art lovers everywhere flock to Miami Beach. Seven days of exhibits, installations, concerts and parties attract the masses.
The for-profit, privately-owned, international art fair has become one of the most prominent yearly events to hit the 305.
Started in 1970 by Basel gallerists Ernst Beyeler, Trudl Bruckner and Balz Hilt, the giant exhibit brings in leading and upcoming artists to showcase their work. Beginning first in Switzerland, the phenomenon made its way to Miami in 2002.
While Art Basel is held at the Miami Beach Convention Center, similar art events are held all throughout the city, concurrently, with Miami Art Week consisting of more than 20 fairs and 1,2000 galleries. Much of Art Week takes place in the metro areas of the city. Though satellite events are unaffiliated with Art Basel, they attract a crowd nonetheless.
Despite Art Basel and Art Week being as grandiose as it is, every year a prominent group of people feel left out by both. While much of Art Week takes place around Wynwood, Downtown and Miami Beach, the locals who live just a few blocks away are barely ever included.
Wynwood lies just north of downtown Miami and east of the beach. Just a few years ago the area was considered an inner city. Gentrification in Wynwood came in the early 2000s and heightened in 2009 with the creation of the Wynwood Walls — an area in which famous graffiti artists come to tag walls. Now the area is plagued with bars, art galleries and restaurants.
Surrounding what has already been altered, lies few places like the Roots Collective Blackhouse. Created in 2014 as Roots Clothing with a focus on apparel with Black propaganda messages, it expanded to a print shop and then later a marketplace for Black artists and business owners to acquire more exposure and knowledge of marketing and economics. Last year, owners and co-founders Thomas and Danny Agnew decided in order to expand and further their passions, they needed a physical place to host all their ventures.
“We realized that the Blackhouse became way more than just a print shop and a storefront. It became a community hub,” said Thomas.
During Art Basel, that community hub turned into an art gallery and open mic — not officially affiliated with the fair.
Since 2014, the men of Roots have hosted an event every year during Basel, to ensure their community doesn’t feel left out of the events and so they can make their own mark. When they first started, they put on a concert.
“Being a Miami native, born and raised here, I always felt like it was intrusive. It was a group of people coming into our city, really not wanting us to be a part of it and just selling us things,” Thomas said. “We’re going to make sure every year that we have something that represents Miami and represents us.”
SPEAK is aimed to do just that.
KAWD — Kristen Downing— desires for her art to tell the stories of and to speak for her people.
“A lot of our stories are not told in schools and so I felt like as an artist I should use my platform to keep their stories alive, so that was my main goal, my vision,” she said.
SPEAK showcases work from KAWD throughout Roots as well as holds an open mic for artists from Miami and New Orleans, allowing them to use their form of art to tell the story they want to portray. Throughout the event artists are also able to sell their work to attendees. Prints, clothing and photographs were all set up at tables throughout the Blackhouse.
“Speak out loud, let your voice be heard; that’s mainly what SPEAK is,” said Downing. “Whether you’re speaking through visual art, music, hairstyle, we are all artists, so we’re speaking some type of way, even when you're blasting music in your car.”
Everyone who attended did just that. Guests and performers walked in brandishing their own style and personality. An array of fashion choices, hairstyles, music playlists and more spoke for those not using their words. For those who did step up in front of the mic, their voices were heard loud and clear.
The Blackhouse and SPEAK allows for artists who have something to say, to express themselves beyond the constraints of Art Basel.
Downing has shown her work at Art Basel in previous years, but doesn't have much interest in going back.
"I did it already, I checked that off my list, I don't want to do it anymore. Some artists probably don’t want to speak up on it. That’s a lot of artists' dreams, to get in those fairs, and it’s hard and it’s expensive to get in them," she said .
She's hopeful that with putting her energy and focus on events such as SPEAK, that are held for and by the community, they can change the culture surrounding the festival and the satellite events.
"I’m tired of Art Basel. I didn't want to do it, but then I thought about it and that’s where I need to be, with my people that really don’t go to the big fairs. Maybe we can start a movement to get the attraction over here," Downing said. "You can get the crowd but you don’t get the media to shine that light on it, so hopefully by us doing it every year we can change that. We had to make noise and I feel like we will change it."
Agnew and Thomas believe that in the years to come, events such as SPEAK will become more prominent within the art scene and during Art Basel.
"These events will be the main events. You can see it now, people are starting to slowly, they want to find the original, they want to find the authentic events," Thomas said. "So real soon, these events will be the go to events, where people are just like 'yo, where the real coach at'.”