EVERY PEOPLE
Celebrating Afro-Caribbean design through immersive, fashion, art and performance events featuring hand-made garments, photography and live music
CHARO OQUET'S Every People uses fashion, art, photography , video, and performance to explore identity and healing through a visual feast. Working with a team of artists and students, to build garments and accessories and design as a powerful medium to celebrate the richness of contemporary Afro-syncretic creativity. It will foreground the Afro-Caribbean roots of Miami’s Latinx diasporic culture through ritual, addressing anti-Blackness in Miami’s diverse communities. These will be presented in an immersive environment in a series of events to celebrate and recognize African diasporic traditions in vernacular culture, reclaiming fashion, beauty, and design as tools of resistance instead of consumerism and assimilation.
Participating Models: Jorja Corporan | Ella Estrella | Charlene Francois | Diamond Gabriel | Zipporah Hinds | Alina Melfi |Aeon Morales |Arielle Morales | Nataizya Laguerre | Jennifer Parra | Kamila Polese | Vera Ramirez| Marco Rivera Rosa, Jr. | Arianna Sanchez | Isabella Sanchez | Samantha Valdes | Nina Vara
Seaming: Abel Reyes, Juan Beltre, Diamond Gabriel, Maite Collection | Makeup: Izabela Cookson Jewelry: Charo Oquet | Production Assistant: Dannee Cuenca, Jason Morrison, Juan Ayala |Photography Assistant: Juan Ayala | Videography/Video Editing: Vidium | Styling /Hair: Claudia Ariano, Abel Reyes, Gabriela Keddell, Vera Ramirez
About the Artist: Dominican born Charo Oquet has lived and worked with communities nationally and internationally and as an art producer, has produced an extensive body of work.
She uses painting, installation, performance, photography and film, among other media, to investigate issues of the displacement, identity, migration, gender, or sociopolitical and cultural issues and to document and reflect on issues of de-colonial aesthesis and the role of contemporary culture in a global reality.
Her work is a subjective observation by someone who is concerned with her surroundings and the culture she left behind.
Charo Oquet, a native of Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic is a Miami-based artist. Her interdisciplinary work has been extensively exhibited internationally and has been well reviewed by art critics and recognized by scholars in books and other publications. In addition to reviews in the Miami Herald, Atlantica Art Journal, African Arts, Art in America, Art Nexus and Art New Zealand, among others, Antonio Zaya Publisher produced and distributed a book of her work, Charo Oquet – Lo Que Ve La Sirena (2002). Her work is also included in such books and catalogs as New Hoodoo - Art of a Forgotten Faith (2008), Files by Octavio Zaya, Miami Contemporary Artists New Zealand's National Museum Te Papa Calendar 2009, Dominican Contemporary Artists and Supermix.
Oquet has had numerous solo exhibitions in Museums and galleries around the world such as the Bass Museum, Miami Beach; Casal Solleric, Palma de Mallorca, Convento de Santo Domingo, Lanzarote, Canary Islands, Spain ( curated by Antonio Zaya) and Oquet’s work has been included in numerous international exhibitions, including Relational Undercurrents: Contemporary Art of the Caribbean Archipelago, Museum of Latin American Art. Long Beach, Ca, 2017; Gaga Now! , Art, Race, and Fluidity in Dominican Republic and Haiti, Martin E. Segal Theatre, CUNY, New York, 2016; 1st. Asuncion Biennial, Salazar Museum, Asuncion, Paraguay, 2015; Be.Bop European Body Politics , Spiritual Revolutions & the Scramble for Africa: Nikolaj Kunsthal, Copenhagen, Denmark; Ballhaus Naunynstraße, Berlin Germany and Art Labour Archives, 2015; 1st Afiriperfoma Biennial Live Art Festival in Africa, Harare, Zimbabwe, 2013; Art, Religion and Politics, Pavillion of (2005) curated by Jean-Hubert Martin, Mami Watta, curated by Henry Drewal at the Fowler Museum at UCLA,(2008); Subliminals, Beijing , China; (2007); Away, at the UNESCO Head Quarters – Paris (2006); After Columbus.com, Kunstnerne Hus, Oslo, Norway, (2003); V Biennal del Caribe’03, ’01, Museo de Arte Moderno de Santo Domingo; En Ruta PR’02, M&M Projects Puerto Rico, curated by Antonio Zaya; Centro Atlantico de Arte Moderno, (CAAM) Gran Canarias, Spain as well as the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, N.Z.
Oquet’s work is in several of museum collections such as the Fort Lauderdale Museum of Art, Frost Art Museum, Florida International University, Miami, FL; CAAM, Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno, Las Palmas de Gran Canarias, Spain; Bass Museum of Art, Miami Beach, Florida; New Zealand National Museum, Wellington, N.Z.; Dowse Art Museum, Lower Hutt, New Zealand; Govett-Brewter Art Gallery, New Plymouth, New Zealand; Foresight Collection, Auckland, New Zealand; Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Wellington, New Zealand; Gulf & Western Americas Corp., New York; Museo de las Casas Reales, Dominican Republic and Museo del Arte Moderno, Dominican Republic.