Locust Projects Announces Wavemaker Grants To Support New Works

Ermol Sheppard is one of Locust Project’s 2025 WaveMakers who received a grant for “First Come, First Serve,” a documentary film that traces the layered history of the Fort Lauderdale Swap Shop (Photo courtesy of Locust Projects)

With all the news about artists’ funding slipping away, Locust Projects announces a wave of grants to support new work.

On Aug. 1, Miami’s longest-running incubator of new art and ideas named 12 Miami-based artists who will each receive up to $6,000 in WaveMaker Grants. The grants were made possible by the Andy Warhol Foundationʼs Regional Regranting Program.

Categories awarded were for “New Work / Projects, Long-Haul Projects, and Research & Development-Implementation.”

The 2025 WaveMakers are Christopher Mitchell, Lucía Morales, Angela Rio, Gabriela Serra, Ermol Sheppard, Barron Sherer, Sofia Valiente, Roxana Barba , Sydney Rose, Akia Dorsainvi, Gabriel Soomar and Teri Watson.

In the spirit of Locust Projectsʼ artist-centered mission, WaveMaker grantees take risks to experiment beyond traditional models for presenting art, creating innovative work that is accessible to the public and presented in non-traditional venues across Miami, according to Lorie Mertes, executive director at Locust Projects.

Selected through an open call process by a team of local and national artists and arts professionals from 101 applications, the 12 visionary artists will create experimental new work that will be shared with the public across Miami in non-traditional venues and platforms.

The announcement of Cycle 12 marks $690,000 in WaveMaker incubator grants awarded to 139 of Miamiʼs most visionary artists, curators, and collectives since WaveMaker launched in 2015.

Barron Sherer’s”Moving Image Alliance” is a hands-on workshop series designed to introduce digital-native artists to the practices and poetics of analog filmmaking. (Photo courtesy of Locust Projects).

Administered by Locust Projects since 2017, and over the past 10 years, WaveMaker has helped launch artist careers and supported the launch and long-term sustainability of local artist-run initiatives such as: Commissioner, Dimensions Variable, EXILE Books, Fringe Projects, Womenʼs Artist Archive Miami, and Third Horizon Film Festival, among others.

“WaveMaker grants are unique in that they encourage anyone with a compelling idea to experiment and take risks in developing and realizing innovative visual arts-based projects that add value to our community,” said Mertes.

The recipients were selected with the criteria that none of the New Work, Long Haul or R&D applicants had received a Wavemaker grant in the past five years. Projects were selected for conceptual rigor and relevance to the local cultural, geographic, and socio-economic context, impact on the local community, and the accessibility of the resulting project to the public.

The 2025 WaveMaker selection panel included: Donnie Cervantes, Program Director at Warhol Regional Regranting Partner, Hoʻākea Source at the Pu’uhonua Society, Honolulu, Oʻahu, Hawaiʻi; Yanira Collado, Artist, 2024 WaveMaker Grantee; Rebecca Pauline Jampol, Co-Director at Warhol Foundation Regional Regranting Partner, Co-director at Project for Empty Space that powers the Newark Artist Accelerator in Newark, New Jersey; Claudia Mattos, Associate Curator of New Media Art at The Bass Museum of Art, Miami Beach.

Christopher Mitchell’s Mystic Triangle is a decade-long film and research project exploring sacred Vodou ceremonies in Souvenance, Badjo, and Soukri, three of Haitiʼs most spiritually significant Lakou, or ceremonial compounds. (Photo courtesy of Locust Projects)

Long Haul Projects, $6,000

Christopher Mitchell, Mystic Triangle

Mystic Triangle is a decade-long film and research project exploring sacred Vodou ceremonies in Souvenance, Badjo, and Soukri, three of Haitiʼs most spiritually significant Lakou, or ceremonial compounds where ritual, oral history, and ancestral memory converge. Using interviews, field recordings, and layered soundscapes, the project honors Haitian spiritual life through a cinematic lens shaped by cultural intimacy and lived experience. Screenings and public conversations in

Little Haiti at venues including Lakou Café and the Little Haiti Cultural Complex aim to open dialogue and reflection across the Haitian diaspora.

Lucía Morales: Sinpay|Trenzar

Sinpay|Trenzar is an ongoing participatory project that uses braiding as a collective action for storytelling and community connection across the Andean diaspora. Beginning in Miami and expanding through gatherings in Chicago, Perú, and Indiana, the project invites participants to contribute to evolving trenzas made of hemp rope and local materials while sharing personal histories of hair, memory, and heritage. With each braid, new stories are woven into the work, which also incorporates video documentation and community-led activations. Supported by the North Miami Beach Public Library and other cultural partners, Sinpay|Trenzar supports cultural visibility, shared dialogue, and connection among Andean communities in South Florida and beyond.

Angela Rio: B0YG1RL

B0YG1RLMUS1C is a feature-length experimental film that follows a Black queer and trans artistic collective in 2025 Miami as they document their lives in the moment before what they believe to be their inevitable big break. Parallel to their story, a sentient supercomputer in the year 2225 ruminates on the cityʼs collapse, searching for meaning in humanityʼs demise. Blending vérité documentary with surrealist sci-fi, the film juxtaposes spirituality, artificial intelligence, environmental decay, and queer futurism. Developed through Masisi Studio, the project includes an original electronic score by local collaborators and will screen in alternative venues across Miami, from clubs to community spaces.

Canto al Árbol by Gabriela Serra is an intergenerational songbook and multimedia project that honors the trees of Miami and the wisdom of community elders. (Photo courtesy of Locust Projects)

Gabriela Serra: Canto al Árbol

Canto al Árbol is an intergenerational songbook and multimedia project that honors the trees of Miami and the wisdom of community elders. Rooted in a series of free workshops led by Serra alongside her mother, grandmother, and local musicians, the project invites participants to share cultural and spiritual relationships with trees. Drawing from Venezuelan traditions where plant knowledge is passed down through song, Canto al Árbol re-centers nature and elders as vital teachers. Through public performances and video portraits, the project preserves these stories in lasting form, connecting memory, land, and song.

Ermol Sheppard: First Come, First Serve

First Come, First Serve is a documentary film that traces the layered history of the Fort Lauderdale Swap Shop, a chaotic, iconic flea market and drive-in that has long served as a launchpad for South Floridaʼs immigrant communities. Blending personal storytelling, archival footage, and visual collage, the film weaves together three narratives: the Swap Shopʼs rise as a cultural and economic hub, the artistic journey of painter Marie Franco, and the uncertain future of this rapidly changing landmark. Presented alongside a portrait exhibition, the film captures a vanishing landmark through layered, personal perspectives.

Barron Sherer: Moving Image Alliance – 16mm for Contemporary Artists

Moving Image Alliance is a hands-on workshop series designed to introduce digital-native artists to the practices and poetics of analog filmmaking. Led by media artist Barron Sherer, the program focuses on 16mm techniques including Bolex camera operation, hand-processing black-and-white film, and scanning footage for digital use. Through free, juried workshops hosted at Miami-based arts and archival spaces, participants will explore the material and historical possibilities of celluloid while developing their own moving image works. The project equips a new generation of experimental filmmakers while expanding Shererʼs ongoing initiative to preserve legacy cinema technologies.

Sofia Vailente: Kahayatle

Kahayatle is a collaborative multimedia installation that centers the Miccosukee Tribeʼs sovereign relationship to the Everglades and the cultural memory embedded in the land. Developed in partnership with the Tribeʼs archives department, the project documents oral histories, field recordings, and video footage tied to sites such as the Everglades Study Research Trip, the Tamiami Trail, and a community garden impacted by diverted water flow. Taking its name from the Indigenous word for “a bright, lit placeˮ and “water that is bright,ˮ Kahayatle brings together sound, memory, and story to illuminate the intertwined ecological histories of the Everglades and Miami.

New Work/Projects

Roxana Barba: Constructs ($6,000)

Constructs is a site-specific, durational installation that unfolds over three hours, beginning at sunset and ending at nightfall.

Blurring the line between sculpture and performance, the work evokes an illusory construction site—part artifact, part inhabited structure—in a slow crescendo of movement, sound, and shifting form. Using bricks, sand, wood, aluminum, and light, performers activate the space through choreographed actions and live sound loops captured by embedded microphones and sensors. Themes of displacement, fragility, resilience, and transformation emerge as materials are built up, broken down, and rearranged. Without being fully participatory, the installation invites audiences to enter and witness its evolution from multiple vantage points, becoming part of a sensory environment where image and sound build toward a totality.

Sydney Rose’s “Still Tippinʼ ” is an installation that reimagines Southern car culture as monument, archive, and site of performance. (Photo courtesy of Locust Projects)

Sydney Rose: Still Tippinʼ ($4,000)

Still Tippinʼ is an installation that reimagines Southern car culture as monument, archive, and site of performance. Featuring full-scale metal car sculptures tilted in motion, the work draws from the legacy of the Great Migration and the Afro-Indigenous aesthetic traditions that traveled from South Florida to the Midwest. Blending metalwork, sound design, and architectural scale, Roseʼs sculptural environment honors Black design processes while centering joy as a radical expression of resilience. This marks the artistʼs first foray into metal and sound, expanding her painting-based practice into an immersive spatial installation that reclaims the gaze and maps the built environment through Black and Indigenous authorship.

Research and Development/Implementation

Akia Dorsainvil: When We Get Together to Talk About God . ., Implementation ($4,000)

Created with Jasmine Repress, When We Get Together to Talk About God. . explores Miamiʼs ancestral spatiality through dialogue with spiritual leaders and community members rooted in Afro-diasporic traditions. Centered on neighborhoods like Opa-Locka, Little Haiti, Liberty City, and Miami Beach, the project gathers and archives oral histories as zines, transcripts, and audiovisual recordings to better understand the cityʼs spiritual landscape. Culminating in a live altar and performance honoring Erzuli Danto in Little Haiti, the work invites community members to co-create ceremony and access the research, artifacts, and embodied knowledge it activates.

“Ah Lilʼ Noise Later” is a site-specific research project by Miami-based artist Gabriel Soomar that explores how Black Atlantic sonic cultures shape public space, memory, and architectural perception. (Photo courtesy of Locust Projects)

Gabriel Soomar: Ah Lil’ Noise Later, Research & Development ($2,000)

Ah Lilʼ Noise Later is a site-specific research project by Miami-based artist Gabriel Soomar that explores how Black Atlantic sonic cultures shape public space, memory, and architectural perception. Proposed for Green Haven in Overtown, the project centers on the design of a custom-built modular sound system inspired by Caribbean sonic traditions. Part sculpture, part platform, the system functions as a material study in how sound choreographs emotion, animates ritual, and shapes collective space. Alongside the structure, Soomar will develop a montage film using archival footage, field recordings, and experimental editing to examine how sound records, distorts, and reimagines place. Together, the installation and film consider how sound might shape our experience of architecture.

Teri Watson: SEED Erosion Blocks, Research & Development ($2,000)

SEED Erosion Blocks is a research-driven installation that repurposes invasive sargassum seaweed into modular concrete blocks designed to stabilize shorelines and support coastal plant growth. Developed through interdisciplinary collaboration with engineers and marine scientists, the project combines climate-adaptive design with material science that repurposes waste as infrastructure. Each block integrates planter cavities and solar lighting, forming a scalable prototype for erosion control that doubles as public art. Installed at sites across South Floridaʼs beaches, SEED Erosion Blocks introduce an experimental model for sustainable coastal design rooted in art, science, and site-specific research.

Locust Projects is located at 297 NE 67^th St., Miami. Info at www.locustprojects.org an www.wavemakergrants.org

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