Summer Open 2025

Josh Aronson (b. 1994, Toronto, Canada) is a Miami-based artist working in photography and installation. His practice explores masculinity, identity, and belonging in the American South through staged photographs that blend autobiography, history, and fiction. Influenced by Southern Gothic traditions, documentary archives, and the visual language of portraiture, his ongoing series Florida Boys reimagines the representation of young men in the region—foregrounding tenderness, camaraderie, and emotional complexity. Aronson earned a BA in Philosophy from Northwestern University (2016) and has spent over 20 years living and working in Miami across different chapters of his life. He is a 2025 Creative Residency Fellow at The Hambidge Center and a 2024 Peyton Evans Artist-in-Residence at The Studios of Key West. Recent honors include multiple Miami Individual Artists (MIA) Grants (2023–2025), two Artist Access (ART) Grants, and both the Juror’s Prize and People’s Choice Award from the City of Miami Beach’s 2024 No Vacancy public art program. His work has been exhibited in solo and group shows in Miami, Chicago, New York, and London, and his first monograph, Florida Boys, is forthcoming.

James Kaun Balo is a Queer Black Haitian Jamaican Miamian and multidisciplinary artist and storyteller from Little Haiti, but was raised by the vast Caribbean communities in Miami, Florida. He is a 2018 United States Presidential Scholar in The Arts and the National YoungArts Foundation Finalist in Visual Arts and will receive his Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Maryland Institute College of Art. James has existed as a mentor, a creative, a community leader, and an educator. James has been honored with the 2023 Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art Residency Fellowship and named an O, Miami Creative Apprentice that same year. Balo was recently a 2024 Summer Resident at YoungArts and is currently a Teaching Artist at the Perez Art Museum while working at the Institute of Contemporary Art. James' creative work has been experienced throughout and outside of the country, including Miami, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, Virginia, Baltimore, New York, Atlanta, and Saint Louis Du Nord, Haiti. Balo has performed and exhibited at John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Miami, Florida’s Adrienne Arsht Center, the National YoungArts Foundation Gallery, and the School of Art Institute’s Sullivan Galleries in Chicago.

Noah Cribb (b. Lakeland, FL, 1998) is a multidisciplinary artist living and working in Miami, Florida, where he graduated with a Bachelor's in Art and technology with a minor in Art History from NWSA. Since graduating, Cribb has populated the learning theatre of the Perez Art Museum Miami with his studio, working and engaging with the public during studio hours. He is represented by Fredric Snitzer Gallery, where his work has been shown alongside artists such as Jose Bedia, Enrique Salya, and Tomas Esson. In 2023, he was in residency in the Design District funded by Craig Robins where his work went on to be acquired into the PAMMS permanent collection. Since gaining representation, Cribb has participated in three group shows and two solo presentations of his own. His work also forms part of Viscaya museums permanent collection.

Isabella “Isa” Marie Garcia (b. 1997, Pembroke Pines, Florida) is an interdisciplinary lens-based artist, writer, and photographer living in her native Miami, Florida. Interested in alternative educational spaces, holistic aftercare, and supporting visual artists in the American South in her practice, Garcia is a recipient of a 2025 Oolite Arts Ellies Creator Award and the 2024 WOPHA Research Fellowship for The Photography Care Matrix: Teaching Traditional and Experimental Photo Techniques within Prison Environments, Residential Rehabs, and Alternative Schools, a 2024 Visual Aids Research Fellowship, and the 2023 Locust Projects Wavemaker Research and Implementation Grant Recipient for What Happens When the Dust Settles?.

Garcia has worked with various Miami-based arts organizations and participated in an alternative arts residency titled School of the Alternative in Black Mountain, North Carolina as documentarian in 2023, teaching faculty in 2024, and student in 2025. Selected solo and curated exhibitions include Fernando Garcia: Calendars & Gradation Systems, Laundromat Art Space 2025 Open Call Finalist, Miami, Florida and INFRAMUNDO (2024), Tunnel Projects, Miami, Florida, and recent group exhibitions include Told, Retold: The Pedagogy of Knowing and Becoming (2025), Greenspace Miami, Miami, Florida and in other words (2025), Tunnel Projects, Miami, Florida.

Her writing can be found in publications such as Contemporary And América Latina, Prism, On / Off-Shore: Poets of the Caribbean and Caribbean Diaspora, The Art Newspaper, Miami New Times, and Burnaway, where she works as their editorial assistant. Garcia graduated summa cum laude with her Bachelor of Arts in English from Florida International University.

Marilyn Loddi (b.1990, USA), born to a Sardinian father and Colombian mother, grew up in Miami's suburbs where her innate curiosity led her to embrace storytelling and performance as gateways to transcend the ordinary. This early creative impulse has matured into an interdisciplinary practice that transforms her personal experiences with physical and mental health into compelling works of art. Drawing inspiration from Louise Bourgeois's psychological exploration through art, Loddi creates performance characters that challenge her social anxiety and rebuild trust with her body. Her work uniquely reframes her complex relationship with food, shifting its role from physical sustenance to intellectual and emotional nourishment. This transformation of personal struggles into universal experiences defines her artistic practice. She has performed at venues including Tunnel Projects/ Touche´, The Nerve: Performance Art Festival, The Patricia and Phillip Frost Art Museum, and Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami. Her sculptural and video installations have been featured in Zilberman Gallery, Locust Projects, Satellite Art Fair, The Miami Design District and The Sagamore Art Week 2020 exhibitions. Beyond her artistic practice, Loddi is an accomplished arts documentary filmmaker. Her work behind the camera has taken her around the world, directing and editing films for prestigious institutions including The Harpo Foundation, ICA Miami, Locust Projects, The Margulies Collection, and The Miami Design District.

Shayla Marshall is a contemporary artist who creates mixed media artworks through world building techniques. Exploring themes that aim to rewrite histories and futures that have detrimentally been prewritten by others. Born and raised in Miami FL 1999, to an African American family, Marshall’s upbringing being raised in a culturally diverse city heavily influences her work. Living in predominantly black neighborhoods like Liberty City and Overtown growing up, there was always a celebration to be who you are. It wasn’t until moving away from home at 18 to pursue her BFA in another state, she was met with adversity on what life was like being black outside of the safety of her birthplace. This experience further prompted Marshall to question these ideas she started to discover about the complexity of the world around her. Now she is currently a full time artist, and graduated from the Contemporary Art Practice MA at the Royal College of Art in London. In her creative endeavors, Marshall likes to pull from different moments in time to reflect the spaces she builds. Storytelling is a major part of the framework that begins every piece. Inviting the viewers in to experience the rich flamboyance of these diverse stories.

Sydney Rose Maubert (b. 1996) is a Haitian-Cuban artist and architect. She holds degrees in architecture from Yale University and the University of Miami, with double minors in writing and art. She is the founder of Sydney R. Maubert LLC., her art and mural practice, which has been awarded by the Graham Foundation, Oolite Ellies Creator Award, NALAC Foundation, GreenSpace Initiative Grant, Miami-Dade Individual Artist Grant, Cornell Council for the Arts Award, Yale Moulton Andros Award, and University of Miami Alpha Rho Chi Award. Her work has been exhibited at mtnspace gallery, Yale North Gallery, Laundromat Arts in Miami ArtWeek 2024, TenBerke Architects, Augusta Savage Gallery, Artist in Residence in the Everglades, GreenSpace Miami in Miami ArtWeek 2023, and Cornell Hartell Gallery. Most notably, her work is in the 21C Museum’s permanent collection. She is the Jeanne and John Rowe Fellow at the Illinois Institute of Technology College of Architecture as an Assistant Visiting Professor. She was the Strauch Fellow at Cornell College of Architecture (2022- 2024). She sits on the board of the Center for Architecture's Scholarship Committee (2023- ). She has assisted in teaching courses at Yale University, Morgan State University, City College of New York, and the University of Miami. Her work has been published in Log, Drawing Matter, and Yale Retrospecta. She was listed as a New Progressive in Architect Magazine.

Christopher Mitchell (b. 1978, New York; works in Miami) is a Haitian-American photographer who grew up in South Florida and explores cultural memory, migration, and transformation across the Caribbean and its diaspora. Rooted in long-term fieldwork and analog practices, Mitchell uses film photography and documentary to archive resilience and ritual in the face of erasure. His work often focuses on Haitian traditions—most notably Kanaval Jacmel and Vodou ceremonies—as well as the gentrifying landscape of Little Haiti in Miami, where he currently lives and works. Mitchell was recently the subject of Shattered Structures, a solo exhibition at FIU’s Miami Beach Urban Studios marking the 15th anniversary of Haiti’s 2010 earthquake. Other exhibitions include Les Sirènes at MOCA Miami and a solo show at the African American Research Library. His ongoing projects include a documentary on Vodou in Souvenance and on Kanaval Jacmel, filmed in Haiti while living there for 15 years.