Join Haitian artist and photographer Vanessa Charlot for a conversation with Grace Aneiza Ali, curator of the Engine for Art, Democracy, and Justice at Vanderbilt University, and Katie Delmez, Frist Art Museum Senior Curator.
Through her lens, Charlot explores the intersections of Black identity, migration, and spirituality, moving between the waters of the Mississippi Delta, Haiti’s shores, and Florida’s coastlines.
Presented in collaboration with the Engine for Art, Democracy, and Justice, this conversation has been planned in conjunction with the Frist’s current exhibition What the Body Carries, featuring Haitian American artists M. Florine Démosthène and Didier William, whose work explores how they navigate spaces beyond Haiti while remaining deeply informed by the country’s cultural and spiritual traditions.
There is no charge to attend the conversation. If guests wish to see the current exhibitions on view, gallery admission applies.
About Vanessa Charlot
Vanessa Charlot is a Miami-born Haitian American photographer, filmmaker, lecturer, and curator known for her evocative black-and-white photography. Her award-winning work challenges preconceptions of Haiti, capturing narratives of power and vulnerability with deep empathy. Charlot’s images explore the intersectionality of race, politics, culture, socio-economics, and gender expression. She is an Assistant Professor of Creative Multimedia at the University of Mississippi School of Journalism and New Media, and her work has been widely published and exhibited internationally.
About Grace Aneisa Ali
Grace Aneiza Ali is a Guyanese-born writer, curator, and Assistant Professor in the Departments of Art and Art History at Florida State University. A curator-scholar of contemporary art of the Global South, her work explores the intersections of art and migration, with a focus on the Caribbean Diaspora, particularly her homeland, Guyana. Her book, Liminal Spaces: Migration and Women of the Guyanese Diaspora, examines migration narratives through art. Ali is the Editor-in-Chief of CAA’s Art Journal Open and the 2024–25 Curator of the Engine for Art, Democracy, and Justice at Vanderbilt University.
About Katie Delmez
Katie Delmez has organized numerous exhibitions during her twenty-four year tenure at the Frist Art Museum, including Multiplicity: Blackness in Contemporary American Collage; Terry Adkins: Our Sons and Daughters Ever on the Altar (with Jamaal Sheats, Director and Curator, Fisk University Galleries); We Shall Overcome: Civil Rights and the Nashville Press, 1957–1968; Nick Cave: Feat.; Carrie Mae Weems: Two Decades of Photography and Video; Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons: Journeys; and her current project devoted to two Haitian American artists, M. Florine Démosthène and Didier William: What the Body Carries.
This event is presented in collaboration with the Engine for Art, Democracy, and Justice (EADJ), an institutional partner with the Frist Art Museum. It is part of The Center for Latin American, Caribbean and Latinx Studies (CLACX) Caribbean Week at Vanderbilt University.
Related exhibition
