ARTNews’ 2022 Decider’s List Includes FSU’s Grace Aneiza Ali
ARTNews presented its 2022 ‘The Decider’s’ list in its December 2021/January 2022 issue, including the Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute, for which FSU Assistant Teaching Professor Grace Aneiza Ali serves as Curator-at-Large.
The yearly list recognizes individuals and institutions who are contributing to the cultural conversation in a pointed way—and moving that conversation forward. Guest editor Hank Willis Thomas noted,
A lot of the people, institutions, and collectives on this list take things that we are all familiar with and look at them in new ways. They are shifting the world on its axis so we can gain new perspective.
About the Caribeean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute
Since its founding in 1976, the Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute has advocated for cultural equity, and racial and social justice for African descendants in New York and across the U.S. Founded by Marta Moreno Vega and presently under the management of executive director Melody Capote and curator-at-large Grace Aneiza Ali, the organization based in East Harlem has been a pioneer in advocating for historically marginalized communities through different kinds of programs and initiatives.
Since 2014, their Innovative Cultural Advocacy Fellowship has helped mentor and train a significant number of BIPOC curators and educators. Similarly, the Afro-Caribbean Art Curatorial Fellowship continues the center’s goal to diversify art institutions, increase cultural equity, and connect the African diaspora by fostering networks at home and abroad, with a group of fellows for 2021 hailing from locales including the Bahamas, United Kingdom, Netherlands, and the United States. In addition, their Curators in Conversation virtual talk series has brought Afro-Caribbean curators into critical debates, and digital exhibitions such as “On Protest and Mourning” have reflected on concerns touching on Black Lives Matter protests, ongoing grappling with unjust conditions, and avoidable catastrophe during a global pandemic.
—Yelaine Rodriguez
About Grace Aneiza Ali
Ali serves as Curator-at-Large for the Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute in New York. In her tenure, she has developed the organization’s first Curatorial Fellowship in Afro-Caribbean Art and launched a thriving public program series, Curators in Conversation, gathering global curators and artists to discuss urgent issues of equity and inclusion affecting museums and the curatorial field.
She is a Fulbright Scholar, Ronald E. McNair Scholar and founder and curator of Guyana Modern, an online platform for contemporary arts and culture of Guyana and founder and editorial director of OF NOTE Magazine — an award-winning nonprofit arts journalism initiative reporting on the intersection of art and activism. She has been named a ‘Global Shaper’ by the World Economic Forum and ‘Creative Trailblazer’ by the Jahajee Sisters Indo-Caribbean Women’s Empowerment Summit.