Above: M. Florine Démosthène, Celia Irina González, and Rianna Jade Parker.
The Pérez Art Museum Miami has announced the three recipients of its 2025 Caribbean Cultural Institute Fellowship, a program that supports artists and scholars exploring the region’s art and diasporic connections.
The fellows — artist M. Florine Démosthène, writer and curator Rianna Jade Parker, and artist-researcher Celia Irina González — will undertake self-directed projects from September to December. The awards include the CCI Artist Fellowship, the CCI Research Fellowship and the CCI + Women Photographers International Archive (WOPHA) Fellowship.
An open call yielded the selections, made by a panel of museum curators and external collaborators from institutions including WOPHA and the University of Virginia.
“This year’s cohort of CCI Fellows is united by their deep research orientation and an investment in alternative forms of knowledge,” said Iberia Pérez González, the museum’s Andrew W. Mellon CCI curatorial associate. “From explorations into human-non-human relationships and ancestral memory to under-recognized artistic legacies, these fellows bring distinct methodologies and perspectives that reflect the richness and complexity of the Caribbean.”
The program, now in its sixth cycle, partners with local organizations to increase the visibility of Caribbean art in Miami and challenge conventional narratives about the region’s cultural history.
M. FLORINE DÉMOSTHÈNE
2025 CCI Artist Fellow
M. Florine Démosthène was born in the United States and raised between Port-au-Prince, Haiti and New York. Démosthène earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts from Parsons School for Design in New York and her Master of Fine Arts from Hunter College-City University of New York.
She has exhibited extensively through solo and selected exhibitions in the United States, Caribbean, UK, Europe, and Africa, with recent solo shows including, What The Body Carries at Frist Art Museum Nashville, Mastering The Dream at SCAD Museum of Art Savannah, and In The Realm Of Love at Mariane Ibrahim Gallery in Paris, France.
She is a recipient of a New York Foundation of the Arts Artist Fellowship, Wachtmeister Award, Tulsa Artist Fellowship, Arts Moves Africa Grant, Black Star Award, and a Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant. She has participated in artist residencies in the United States, Caribbean, UK, Slovakia, South Africa, Ghana, and Tanzania.
Her works are on view at National Museum for African American History and Culture, Africa First Collection, University of South Africa (UNISA), Lowe Museum of Art, Hessler Museum of Art, PFF Collection of African American Art, the City of Seattle Washington, and in various private collections worldwide.
RIANNA JADE PARKER
2025 CCI Research Fellow
Rianna Jade Parker is a writer, critic, historian, and curator. Her criticism and essays have appeared in ARTnews, Artforum, BOMB, Frieze, and The Guardian. She has contributed to numerous catalogue and gallery publications for Stephen Friedman Gallery, Thadeous Ropac, The Royal Academy, Hayward Gallery, Tate Etc, Camden Art Centre, Thames & Hudson, Phaidon Press, MoMA, and ICA Boston. She is a contributing writer at Frieze Magazine and a contributing editor for Tate Publishing. She is the author of “A Brief History of Black British Art” (Tate Publishing) and her second book is forthcoming (Frances Lincoln). Parker has programmed talks and screenings and has taught classes internationally at Cambridge University, Tate Britain, ICA London, Royal College of Art, South London Gallery, Black Cultural Archives, and Somerset House.
CELIA IRINA GONZÁLEZ
2025 CCI + WOPHA Fellow
Celia Irina González lives and works in Mexico City. She holds a Ph.D. in social anthropology from the Universidad Iberoamericana, Mexico City, and a master’s degree in visual anthropology from FLACSO, Ecuador.
She has participated in the exhibitions Emergent/cy, Entre Vienna, Austria; Cuba Dispersa, Cranbrook Art Museum, Detroit; Arte Latinoamericano, Colección MEIAC, Museo Extremeño e Iberoamericano de Arte Contemporáneo, Badajoz; Sin Authorización: Contemporary Cuban Art, Wallach Art Gallery, NY; Ojos de hueso, Angeles Baños Gallery, Spain; Esok, Jakarta Biennial, Indonesia; Kochi-Muziris Biennial, India; Cuban Pavilion, Venice Biennial; and Rendez-Vous, Lyon Biennial.
She has received the Botín Foundation Grant for Visual Arts and the Grants & Commissions Program from The Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation. She has been in residence at Reinbeckhallen Residency Program, Berlin; El Ranchito Residency, Matadero Center, Madrid in collaboration with Artista x Artista; Residency Program KulturKontakt, Vienna, Austria; and Skills Biennial, Gray’s School of Art, Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen City.
