OPEN CALL: FLAVORS THAT FORM US
Food is a vessel for history. Recipes carry the memory of cultures, the events that define their identities, the imprint of colonial entanglements, Indigenous knowledge, human ingenuity, and diasporic reinvention. From observing the cycle of seasons to religious festivals and historical remembrances, Chinese New Year, Christmas, Diwali, Eid al-Fitr, Fiestas Patrias, Jou Endepandans, Nochebuena, Passover, Semana Santa and Thanksgiving, humans have always gathered, in abundance or austerity, to dine together. Food also accompanies the milestones of life, a central part of rituals that bring families together to mark birth, maturity, union, and death.
South Florida is a crossroads of the Global South, a place where the Caribbean, Latin America, and the American South meet in kitchens and cafes, on street corners, at church halls, in backyards, and around tables that hold far more than food. In Miami, these traditions converge and transform: Haitian soup Joumou shared on New Year’s Day as an act of liberation; Cuban cafecito rituals that anchor entire neighborhoods; Jamaican jerk pits perfuming the air at block parties; Dominican pastelitos passed around at baptisms; Brazilian feijoada simmering through the afternoon; Bahamian conch salad chopped fresh at community festivals; fritters, chowder and square grouper from Key Largo to Key West; Gullah Geechee foodways echoing across the coastlines. Each dish is a story of where people come from and how they continue to shape this region.
During the Middle Passage, African women carried the future with them in the only place their captors could not strip bare, their hair. Before being forced onto ships, they braided seeds into their plaits: okra, black‑eyed peas, rice, millet, and other staples of their homelands. This quiet act of resistance was both practical and profoundly symbolic. In a world designed to erase them, they safeguarded the ingredients of memory, nourishment, and cultural continuity. The crops that sprouted from those seeds across the Caribbean and the Americas preserved something from home, and shaped entire food traditions Miami enjoys today.
This year’s open call seeks visual artworks that illuminate the ways communities gather, ceremonies, celebrations, and everyday rituals that define belonging. We are interested in Miami artists’ perspectives on the culinary textures of family history, the choreography of shared meals, the resilience embedded in inherited recipes, and the creativity that emerges when cultures meet and mingle. Artists are encouraged to reflect on how food becomes a language of remembrance, a tool of resistance, a marker of identity, and a bridge across generations. This exhibition honors the flavors that traveled here by boat, by plane, by memory, and by necessity, and the people who continue to keep those traditions alive.
Every year Green Space Miami produces a group show of 10 Miami artists. Selected artists are awarded a grant of $5,000, and their works are brought together in a show accompanied by a program of talks, performances and activations.
Artists are selected by a committee comprised of Miami’s curators, museum directors, artists, educators and cultural producers (list below). The selection process is conducted anonymously and individually resulting in 10 awardees whose work will be exhibited in a group show from October 2026 – March 2027 with artists hosting events throughout the run of show.
Open for proposals until July 31.
Advisory Committee 2026
Chana Budgazad Sheldon, Director, Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) North Miami
Donnamarie Baptiste, Curator and Cultural Strategist
Greg Clark, Co-Founder/CEO, RiseWorks
Amy Galpin, Executive Director and Chief Curator, Museum of Art and Design Miami Dade College
Jodi Mailander Farrell, VP of Development, The Everglades Foundation
Heaven Jones, Artist and Curator
T. Eliott Mansa, Artist
Jairo Ontiveros, VP and Dorothea Green Chair of Education and Community Engagement, Adrienne Arsht Center
Franklin Sirmans, Director, PAMM – Pérez Art Museum Miami
Marie Vickles, Director of Education, PAMM, Curator-in-Residence, Little Haiti Cultural Center
Pedro Jermaine, Artist
Kimberly Green, President, Green Family Foundation; Founder, Green Space Miami
Michelangelo Bendandi, Green Space Miami Co-Founder
