WOMEN ARTISTS
ARCHIVE MIAMI
bringing Miami 's art history to you
about
"Within complex and ever shifting realms of power relations, do we position ourselves on the side of colonizing mentality? Or do we continue to stand in political resistance with the oppressed, ready to offer our ways of seeing and theorizing, of making culture, towards that revolutionary effort which seeks to create space where there is unlimited access to the pleasure and power of knowing, where transformation is possible? That choice is crucial, because it determines “our capacity to envision new alternative, oppositional aesthetic acts” and “informs the way we speak about these issues, the language we choose."
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[Bell Hooks Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics. Boston: South End, 1990. 145-53]
mission & vision
WAAM envisions an art world where the legacies of women and gender-expansive artists from all backgrounds are visible, celebrated, and prioritized.
Rooted in decolonial principles, WAAM is a Miami-based nomadic archival platform dedicated to preserving, documenting and bringing these histories to the forefront.​
objectives
To reposition archives that have traditionally operated as sites of privilege, to record the creative contributions of communities who have been left out of the historical record.
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To re-examine archival practices and offer access points through multiple pathways that increase visibility for cultural practitioners through dynamic archival programs.
Our
Story
building WAAM
Funding from the Wavemaker Grant enabled the building of WAAM Pilot Digital Archive. In 2020-2021, WAAM worked with eight artists to preserve their studio archives. Using an open-source platform, artists can create collections that preserve their living legacies. WAAM centers people first and emphasizes a participatory approach to archiving, where the artist or cultural producer is in control of shaping their living legacy. By creating peripheral archival access points within the community, WAAM will reframe how archives can engage and support local artists.
anita sharma
founder & director
Anita Sharma is a Miami-based archivist, researcher, and collections manager with over twenty years of experience in the field of Visual Arts Archiving. She is the founder of WAAM (Women Artists Archive Miami) and specializes in community-based archiving initiatives, digital archiving practices and legacy preservation. She has worked at libraries, archives, museums and private collections in the US, England & India, including the British Library, Arani & Shumita Bose Collection, Rubell Collection, Debra & Dennis Scholl Collection, Zarina Hashmi Archive, Frost Art Museum, Aditi Singh Archive & SALIDAA (South Asian Diaspora Literature & Arts Archive).​
devora perez
digital archivist
​Devora Perez is a digital archivist and visual artist born and raised in Miami. She earned her BFA from New World School of the Arts in 2016, and her MFA from Florida International University in 2020. Perez is trained in Archiving and Digitization Fundamentals I & II and has digitized 25 years’ worth of DVCAI’s archive. The project was funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) and carried out in partnership with the University of Miami's Special Collections and Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC) at Florida International University. Perez currently works as the Project Coordinator and Digital Archivist at Women Artists Archive Miami (WAAM).
Our
Team
