In recent years, AIRIE has asked artists to critically analyze and approach the concept of the “Outdoors as a place of belonging.” As we build on this mission, we have seen art used as a tool to educate, preserve, and celebrate diverse narratives when it comes to ecological topics, climate, and cultural history. With continued advancements in technology, adaptation of analog ways of making, and interdisciplinary approaches, how stories are communicated become reimagined to reflect contemporary narratives. For the AIRIE 2024 Fellowship Theme, we are asking artists: How do you define innovative storytelling? How can this innovation be used as a tool to educate, preserve, and celebrate the natural environment?

AIRIE received more than 200 applications from all over the world for its 2024 residency program, and finalists were selected by a National Advisory Committee of established artists, scholars, and community leaders. AIRIE works together with the Everglades National Park to curate an immersive residency experience through excursions and engagements with scientists, park rangers, indigenous groups, historians, and community leaders to provide an in-depth look at this biologically and culturally significant ecosystem, as well as the myriad challenges it faces. 

About AIRIE
Artists in Residence in Everglades (AIRIE) is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit that empowers artists to think creatively and critically about our relationship to the environment with a mission of revealing new paths forward. AIRIE’s immersive residency program provides artists the opportunity to live, research, and create inside Everglades National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage site currently listed as in danger of disappearing forever.

Through our programs, AIRIE brings art, environment, and racial justice together for a more sustainable and inclusive future. Since 2001, AIRIE has supported the careers of over 190 artists, writers, musicians, curators, and other creatives through full immersion in the park. 

About the 2024 AIRIE Fellows 

The Honourable Elizabeth A. Baker
Elizabeth is a new renaissance artist whose work is best expressed as a constantly evolving practice that doesn’t fit neatly into definition or expectation boxes. It is an artistic body of work vast in scope and scale outside of the confines of a simple elevator pitch, unrestrained and unencapsulated. Elizabeth has received international recognition from the press, scholars, and the public for her conceptual compositions and commitment to inclusive programming. Fanfare Magazine proclaimed in Fall 2019 “Perhaps Baker will be the Pauline Oliveros of her generation, and perhaps she will be more than that.” Elizabeth is the 2021-2022 Rieman and Baketel Fellow for Music at Harvard Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.

Germane Barnes 
Germane’s award-winning research and design practice investigates the connection between architecture and identity, examining architecture’s social and political agency through historical research and design speculation. Mining architecture’s social and political agency, he examines how the built environment influences black domesticity. Born in Chicago, IL Germane Barnes received a Bachelor of Science in Architecture from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a Master of Architecture from Woodbury University where he was awarded the Thesis Prize for his project Symbiotic Territories: Architectural Investigations of Race, Identity, and Community.  Currently, he is an Assistant Professor and the Director of The Community Housing & Identity Lab (CHIL) at the University of Miami School of Architecture, a testing ground for the physical and theoretical investigations of architecture’s social and political resiliency. His work has been featured in international institutions most notably, The Museum of Modern Art NY, San Francisco MoMA, LACMA, Chicago Architecture Biennial, MAS Context, The Graham Foundation, The New York Times, Architect Magazine, DesignMIAMI/ Art Basel, Metropolis Magazine, Domus, Wallpaper* Magazine and The National Museum of African American History where he was identified as one of the future designers on the rise.

Morel Doucet
Born in 1990 in Pilate, Haiti, Morel is a Miami-based multidisciplinary artist and arts educator. Drawing from his Haitian roots, Doucet explores climate gentrification, migration, and displacement within Black diaspora communities using ceramics, illustrations, and prints. His artwork presents narratives that delve into the contemporary reshaping of the Black experience, capturing the degradation of the environment where economic inequality, the commodification of industry, personal labor, and race intersect. 

Laurena Finéus
Laurena is currently based in New York, NY, and has received an MFA at Columbia University (2024). She was born and raised in Ottawa, ON. She is a graduate of the University of Ottawa with a Bachelor of Fine Arts. Her work has been exhibited at the Hudson River Museum (2023), Jenkins Johnson (2023), Wallach Art Gallery, NY (2023), G101 (2022), Karsh-Masson Gallery (2021), the Ottawa Art Gallery (2021), and Art mûr (2019) among others. Her work is also a part of a range of private collections internationally. She was the recipient of the Helen Frankenthaler Fund (2023), the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant (2022), the Ottawa Arts Council IBPOC Emerging Artist Award (2022), the Edmund and Isobel Ryan Visual Art Scholarship (2020), and the Ineke Harmina Standish Memorial (2019).

Chris Friday
Chris is a multidisciplinary artist based in Miami. Her portfolio features large-scale works on paper, murals, video, ceramics, projections, photography, comic illustrations, installations, and social practice/activism through curating. Friday’s work has been included in exhibitions locally, nationally, and internationally. Recent shows include solo exhibitions “Good Times” (2023) curated by Laura Novoa and presented at Oolite Arts (2023), “One More River” presented at Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, Tennessee, and group exhibitions such as “Rest is Power” (2023) curated by Deborah Willis and presented at New York University’s Center For Black Visual Culture, “The Cartography Project” presented by the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. (2022) and “Who Owns Black Art?” presented by Zeal Press (2019).

Gentry George
Artistic Director of Zest Collective and a Professor at New World School of the Arts, Gentry George, began dancing at age eight. He's a YoungArts awardee and his talent landed him on HBO's 'Masterclass' with Jacques d'Amboise. Notably, Gentry received accolades such as the 2022 Dance Miami Choreographers Grant and the 2023 Miami Individual Artist Award. After graduating from The Juilliard School, Gentry joined Ailey II and earned recognition as "one of three men to watch in Ballet" by the NY Post. He also danced with the Dance Theatre of Harlem. In 2013, he founded Zest Collective, which performed at various New York venues, including The United Palace, HarlemStage, and The Wassaic Project. In 2017, he became Artist in Residence at Randolph College and later joined the faculty at the American Musical & Dramatic Academy. In 2020, Gentry moved to South Florida. He received a commission from the Miami Light Project for Here & Now 2023 and choreographed and directed PianoSlam 14, presented by Dranoff 2 Piano and the Adrienne Arsht Center. He also choreographed The 2023 Juneteenth Experience, presented by Hued Songs at the Miami Beach Bandshell.

Venus Jasper 
Venus is queer visual artist and musician, storyteller, world builder, writer, and curator - currently based in Amsterdam, Netherlands. They completed a Masters in Fine Arts in 2023 at the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam. In their current artistic practice, they work with participatory performances that take place inside greatly detailed hand-made multi-sensory installations. Via speculative and ritual gatherings they like to offer room for queer kinship and connection with the natural world, and each other. Their first big solo show, EARTHSHRINE, presented a speculative shrine for soil full of earthly imaginations. It featured videos, drawings, sculptures, a scent-scape, and various live programs, all wrapped in a huge hand-made willow and hemp fiber sculptural wall. At the moment, Venus is working on Wetland Worship, a project focused on swamps, bogs, and other murky wetlands that are historically drained and misused. Jasper has exhibited internationally since 2010.

Charles Humes Jr. 
Miami-born, Charles Humes Jr. comes from a rich family heritage of the Grand Turks, Exuma, and Eleuthera Islands of the Bahamas. A nationally acclaimed painter, printmaker, draftsman, and educator. Humes' early expressions found a voice championing the plight of the homeless, urban conditions, and stereotypes predicated on socio-political, educational, and economic prejudices and bigotry. Humes Jr. has received many national and regional awards for his signature depictions of the African-American condition. 

David Rahahę·tih Webb
David is rooted in the Tuscarora Nation of North Carolina. David’s traditional art in sculpture, beadwork, and other mediums has been featured in museum exhibits and permanent collections throughout the eastern United States. David serves as a culture keeper and historian for his community and has assisted others. David is also a Seminole and Miccosukee descendant; his direct ancestors were members of the Spanish Indian rancho community of Sanibel Island, his hometown. He recently authored The Spanish Seminole: The Untold History of the Spanish Indians as Shared by a Descendant, which presents a detailed account of the Spanish Indians- their history, culture, and legacy using newly uncovered documents, primary sources, and oral histories.

Lauren Shapiro 
Lauren is a visual artist based in Miami who integrates ceramics and technology to discover and share insights into the natural world. Shapiro completed her MFA in Ceramics from the University of Miami in 2016. She has received grant awards and commissions from organizations such as the New York Foundation for the Arts, Knight Foundation, Andy Warhol Foundation, Oolite Arts, Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs, and Art in Public Places. Growing up on the edge of the Everglades in a South Florida suburb, Shapiro was conscious of the division between Florida's wild terrains and sprawling urban development. This contrast fuels her passion for exploring ways to harmonize nature with human existence through art.