Co-Founders/Editors

Akia Dorsainvil (He/They) is a cultural worker, programmer, transdisciplinary artist, and DJ (Pressure Point) based in Miami, Florida. Their work aims to shed light on the beauty, talent, and brilliance of black queer folks. As one of the founders of the black queer collective Masisi, they have been able to provide programming that specifically highlights the beauty of the diaspora throughout time, but with a focus on the Caribbean. With their background being of Haitian and African American ancestry, it fuels their creative process by tracing the lives of those through Masisi is a platform/event-focused organization based in Miami, FL, whose mission is to share the art, life, and lineage of Black queer folks of the Americas and the Caribbean diaspora through many expressions. Their current exploration shows up in the form of radio art.

Jasmine Respess (She/They) is a Floridian writer, editor, archivist, and researcher. They write about the intersections of their Black, Queer, Southern, and Caribbean identities in their poetry and nonfiction pieces. Their archival and research work centers on the Black diaspora, spiritual traditions, and Caribbean folktales and lore. At New College of Florida, they spent much of their undergrad career as a journalist, so they utilize research and interviews with family and community members in much of their work. They earned an MFA in Poetry from The New School in New York in 2020. They live in North Miami with their two dogs. Jasmine is editor-in-chief of The Islandia Journal and founder, editor, and publisher of Penumbra Press.

Contributors

Jevon Brown (He/Him) is a multidisciplinary artist based in Miami. He graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design with a BFA in Textiles. A native Miamian of Bahamian, Jamaican, and Black Southern heritage, Brown draws inspiration from the intersections of identity, community, and belonging. He creates bold, immersive spaces, both ethnographic and physical, where sensations, memory, and histories intertwine, giving fullness to untold stories. His work intimately explores Black masculine kindred spaces, drawing on fashion, painting, collaging, interior design, silkscreen printing, dyeing, embellishing, and photography. Brown’s work has been shown in institutions such as the University of Miami Lowe Art Museum, Miami; The Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, Florida; and Centrum Foundation, Port Townsend, Washington. He has been featured in Dwell Magazine’s 24 Global Emerging Designers List; Frieze Digital Art Basel 2023; and awarded the Inaugural Eleanor Merritt Fellowship at The Ringling Museum of Art.

Akada Duval (They/Them) is a multidisciplinary artist working across painting, mixed media, murals, poetry, dance, and space activation. They build environments that feel lived-in before anyone arrives. Layered, dark, mystical, and charged with something just beneath the surface. Their visual work carries the same weight as their words and their spaces: intentional, textured, and impossible to look away from. Everything they touch has a mood before it has a name.

Lance Dixon (He/Him) is a writer, poet, and Miami native. His poetry and writing have appeared in Islandia Journal and Undrbelly Magazine. Professionally, he is an audience engagement producer for The 19th News and was previously a reporter and editor at The Miami Herald, The New Tropic and WLRN.

Johel Pereira (He/Him) is a Miami-based artist currently pursuing a Master’s at Barry University. He uniquely blends design and film to explore universal human experiences. His work transcends geographic boundaries, emphasizing storytelling to address shared challenges and foster empathy. Through his distinct artistic voice, Pereira invites viewers to connect with narratives that reflect the essence of the human condition, creating a dialogue that unites diverse audiences.

Isabella “Isa” Marie Garcia (She/Her/Ella) is an interdisciplinary lens-based artist, writer, and educator living in her native Miami, Florida. Interested in alternative educational spaces, holistic aftercare, and supporting visual artists in the American South in her practice, she is actively researching the work of women and non-binary photographers in correctional facilities and residential rehabs. Garcia was in residence at Bakehouse Art Complex for their 2025 Summer Open program and is an associate artist with the organization. She is pursuing a low-residency MFA in Image Text at Cornell University beginning Summer 2026 and graduated summa cum laude with her Bachelor of Arts in English from Florida International University in 2019.

Catherine Bertrand Farmer (She/Her) is a Haitian-American interdisciplinary artist based in Miami, FL. Raised across three continents, Farmer’s childhood taught her how identity shifts across place and time. Her work draws on folklore within the Black diaspora and explores how stories travel, transform, and carry cultural memory across generations. She is captivated by the space where myth and lived experience intersect.

Fola Akinde (She/They) is a Miami-based interdisciplinary artist focused on ideas of Black hauntology as it relates to memory, history, and conceptions of liberation. Their Nigerian cultural background has inspired an interest in archives and research on the Black diaspora, including history and folklore related to Nigeria, the US, and Latin America. Much of their work focuses on the importance of expanding the idea of what an archive is, its accessibility, and how that documentation can play a role in the (re)assemblage of imagery and memory. Incorporating archival items like found imagery, objects, writings, and ephemera, Fola has reconfigured their own conceptions of narratives, mythology, and works to illuminate connections to sites and spiritual practices.

Keahi Elie (She/They) is from Miami, Florida, and comes from Haitian and Puerto Rican ancestry. They feel most connected to their spirituality through tending to the land, food preparation, and recipe preservation. They feel closest to God when they are in the ocean. It is their place of full relinquishment and rebirth. They are a massage therapist and healer by trade. Photography and poetry are the creative practices in which they feel most at home. They love to explore how identity, place, and belonging are shaped by the natural world.

Natalie Foucauld (She/Her) is an artist, DJ, and producer based in Miami, often in transit between cities. In her current writing phase, she’s leaning into something more personal and unfiltered, moving through guitar-led demos, experimental indie, trip hop, and pop, guided by instinct and candid takes. She is also one half of a band called guess? with Chris Cadaver, a project formed in motion, drawing from their Caribbean roots and shaped by cloud rock, dub, and drum and bass.

Kay-Ann ‘Sage’ Henry (She/They) is a multidisciplinary artist born and raised in Kingston, Jamaica, who is now based in Miami, Florida. Their artistic practice is deeply rooted in a love of memory and culture, and they convey this through poetry, journalism, photography, and zine-making. Her work is also deeply entrenched in queer and third-world womanist politics and driven by Nina Simone’s words: “An artist's duty, as far as I'm concerned, is to reflect the times.”

Sydney Maubert (She/Her) (b. 1996) is a Haitian-Cuban artist and architect based in Miami. She holds degrees in architecture from Yale University and the University of Miami, with double minors in writing and art. Maubert is the founder of Sydney R. Maubert LLC, her art and mural practice, which has been awarded by the Graham Foundation, Oolite Arts, Locust Projects, NALAC Foundation, GreenSpace Miami Museum, Miami-Dade Department of Cultural Affairs, Cornell Council for the Arts Award, Yale Moulton Andros Award, and University of Miami Alpha Rho Chi Award. Most notably, her work is in the 21C Museum’s permanent collection. 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 the Avery Review, Log, Islandia, Drawing Matter, and Yale Retrospecta. Maubert was listed as a New Progressive in Architect Magazine.

Grace Magdalene ‘the Muse’ (She/Her) is just a person who is honest in their work, no frills, just saying what it is that their heart truly feels and desires and wants.

Daga Lisa Nyang (They/She), born 1996, is led by curiosity and care.

Helen Peña (They/Them) is a filmmaker and cultural programmer whose work centers memory, mysticism, and water as sites of social and political inquiry. Their films have screened on PBS and at festivals and institutions nationwide, including New Orleans Film Society, Prismatic Ground, Third Horizon Film Festival, The New Museum, and more. They are currently pursuing an MFA at CalArts.

Alina Perez (She/They) (b. 1995) creates monumental works on paper using charcoal and pastel, blending personal recollection and imagination to rethink familial history, personal trauma, and notions of identity that are rooted in both the individual and in geography. Her lexicon of symbols and environments pull heavily from her lived experiences as a Cuban-American raised in Miami, FL, examining the relationship between the dense and vulnerable life of the region’s tropical wetlands and the depth of human experience. Perez’s work has been exhibited at the Taubman Museum of Art, Roanoke, VA; Atlanta Contemporary, GA; Arcadia Missa Gallery & Publishers, London, UK; Yossi Milo Gallery, New York, NY. Perez received her BFA in Painting from the Rhode Island School of Design and her MFA in Painting and Printmaking from the Yale School of Art. The artist lives and works in Miami, FL.

Genesis Silva (She/Her) is a designer and artist based out of South Florida.

Zykeria Rolle (She/Her) is a visual storyteller born and raised in Miami, Florida. She studied Entertainment Management at the University of Central Florida, where she grew her passion for film production management. She has seen firsthand how access to the arts empowers youth and fosters cultural expression, and she is passionate about contributing to initiatives that create meaningful opportunities for underserved communities. Her current work running a community archival page called GoingOvertown, combined with her proactive approach and love for storytelling, shapes the thoughtful and intentional way she approaches every project. A traveler at heart, Zykeria is always exploring new perspectives and places to inspire her work.