ARCAthens Virtual Residency July 2022
In addition to her advocacy, she is the founder of Warrior Woman, a rehabilitation program for displaced trauma survivors, and the founder and Editor in Chief of ‘Distinguished Diva’,
Tasha Dougé is a Bronx-based, Haitian-infused artist, artivist & cultural vigilante. Her body of work activates conversations around women, advocacy, sex, education, societal “norms,” identity and Black pride. Through conceptual art, teaching, and performance, Dougé devotedly strives to evoke empowerment for women and illuminate the contributions of Black people, declaring that her “voice is the first tool within my art arsenal.”
She has been featured in The New York Times, Essence and Sugarcane Magazine. She has shown nationally at RISD Museum, The Apollo Theater & Rush Arts Gallery. Internationally, Dougé has shown at the Hygiene Museum in Germany. She is an alum of the Laundromat Project’s Create Change Fellowship, The Studio Museum of Harlem’s Museum Education Program, Haiti Cultural Exchange’s Lakou Nou residency, the Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute’s Innovative Cultural Advocacy Program and their inaugural Digital Evolution Artist Retention program.
Marie Vickles is the Director of Education at the Pérez Art Museum Miami and administers programs at the museum that directly serve over 100,000 youth and adults annually. Marie has organized arts educational programs, workshops, and exhibitions across the United States and the Caribbean for over 15 years. She is currently the Curator-in-Residence at the Little Haiti Cultural Complex and maintains an active practice as an independent curator producing over 30 exhibitions and curatorial projects. Her curatorial work includes the co-curation of Prizm Art Fair, Miami, FL (2013), Visionary Aponte: Art and Black Freedom, Little Haiti Cultural Complex, Miami, FL (2017), walls turned sideways are bridges: narratives of resistance at Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University (FAMU), Tallahassee, FL (2019), and Dust Specks on the Sea, Little Haiti Cultural Complex, Miami, FL (2019) and the San Francisco Art Institute (2021). In her work as an arts educator and cultural practitioner, she is concerned with the relationship between creativity and community engagement – with the goal of supporting equity, sustainability, and access for all, through the arts.
In my work as a curator, arts educator and cultural practitioner, I am concerned with the development of new ways to bridge the connections between creativity and community engagement – with the goal of supporting equity, sustainability and access for all, through the arts. The act of making art is both a sacred and ordinary practice that every human has the capacity, and duty to participate. I curate for the purpose of sharing, and inspiring those that come across an exhibition and the accompanying arrangements of letters, words, sentences and thoughts on what it means to “practice” art from the various entry points that exist in the continuum of creative work. My curatorial practice can be then stated as a manifesto on art as life and life as art:
- Art is a human right
- Art is a natural expression that all people are capable of demonstrating
- Art is a daily practice
- Art is thought and theory realized
- Art is an act of spirit that exists beyond commodification
Marie Vickles