Miami, FL - September 16, 2025 - AfriKin, one of Miami Art Week/Art Basel’s most sought-after cultural platforms, proudly announces the appointment of Dr. Joseph L. Underwood, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Art History at Kent State University, as the new curator of the 2025 AfriKin Art Fair.

The 2025 edition, titled “Through Creation, We Find Meaning,” will run from November 30 – December 7, 2025 in Miami, presenting a multidisciplinary exhibition of Global African art across painting, sculpture, installation, sound, movement, and ritual.

Founded and curated for the past ten years by Alfonso Brooks, AfriKin Art Fair has been recognized as a premier event during Miami Art Week/Art Basel Miami Beach, with features in the New York Times, Deco Drive, NBC, ABC, and other leading media outlets. Known for bridging art, community, and ethics, AfriKin continues to redefine the cultural landscape with exhibitions that are communal, cultural, and ethical.

A New Chapter of Leadership

“AfriKin is built on the principle of placing the right people in the right seats,” says Alfonso Brooks, Founder of AfriKin. “After curating the fair for a decade, I am thrilled to welcome Dr. Joseph Underwood to the helm. His expertise, vision, and commitment to Global African art will ensure AfriKin continues to grow as a sanctuary for creation and cultural dialogue.”

Dr. Underwood is a distinguished art historian and curator specializing in artists from the African continent and its Diaspora. His research and curatorial practice explore post-colonialism, (trans)nationalism, globalization, and biennialism, with a particular focus on Francophone West and North Africa.

He has curated and/or contributed to exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Brooklyn Museum, Musée Boribana in Dakar, the Dakar Biennale for Contemporary African Art, and the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art. Notable projects include:

• TEXTURES: the history and art of Black hair
• The View From Here: Contemporary Perspectives From Senegal
• Import/Export
• Into the Wind: the Veils
• (dis)Mantled: Amber Ford
• Blackbird: For a Brown Baby Boy

Currently, Dr. Underwood is co-curating the Cayman Islands Biennial. His writings have appeared in Art in America, World Art, SUNU Journal, Black Camera, and edited volumes from Phaidon, Routledge, Columbia University Press, and Oxford University Press.

The 2025 Theme: Through Creation, We Find Meaning

A multidisciplinary exhibition that centers art as a vessel of spirit, history, and culture. Like the Calabash—cherished across African traditions as a container of sustenance, ritual, and story—this year’s exhibition positions art as a vessel of memory, resilience, and resistance. The program unfolds in three movements:

• Testimony – Art bearing witness to silenced histories and personal lineages.
• Remedy – Creation as ritual for healing generational wounds.
• Reclamation – Artists resisting erasure, reclaiming cultural memory, and reasserting ownership of identity, time, and land.

“In a world that too often demands our silence or spectacle, this exhibition stands as an insistence: through art, we speak, heal, mend, remember, and return,” says Dr. Underwood. “It is both ceremony and necessity—an affirmation that Global Africa’s creative practice is sacred and limitless.”

AfriKin Art Fair 2025 Programming

• Nov. 30 – Opening Night All-White Vernissage + VIP Press Preview
• Dec. 5 – AfriKin Talks: “Ethical Practices in the Arts” (Moderated by Dr. Allison K. Young with panelists Allison Glenn, Gia Hamilton, Lisa Anderson, and Dr. Underwood)
• Dec. 6 – AfriKin Fashion Workshops: Learn firsthand from the featuring designers from Global Africa and the Black World that will be on the runway on Sunday.
• Dec. 7 – AfriKin Fashion Runway: Resistance on the Runway, featuring designers from Global Africa and the Black World
• Daily – Art Exhibitions, Performances, and Workshops

Dr. Joseph L. Underwood, Ph.D.

The exhibition becomes a sanctuary—for artist and audience alike—where the sacred labor of our creations is honored as an act of eternal becoming. At its heart, the exhibition affirms Global Africa’s creative practice as sacred and limitless.

Founded in Miami, the AfriKin Art Fair has become a signature event during Miami Art Week, celebrated for its commitment to communal, cultural, and ethical practices while spotlighting the vibrancy of Global Africa’s artists.

Location: Maison AfriKin, in the Scott Galvin Community Center, 1600 NE 126th St., Downtown, North Miami, FL 33181

Date: November 30th – December 7th

Time: 11 am – 9 pm

For tickets, scheduling, and more details, please visit AfriKin.art or on social media @afrikinnation

For media inquiries and more details, please contact: media@afrikin.org

About AfriKin Foundation

The 501(c)3 nonprofit organization, AfriKin creates cultural connections through masterful artistry and meaningful conversations. The term AfriKin is the fusion of two words -- Africa and kinship. AfriKin sustains cultural programming designed to highlight the role of art and culture in human development and enrichment in South Florida. AfriKin exists as an effort to create opportunities for positive transformation through thought and action sustained by academic articulations, aesthetic imaginations for the development of cultural industries. AfriKin emphasizes cultural connection and kinship across ethnic lines. It focuses on engagement and quality of care, championing Global Africa and the Black world’s image to allow more strategic partnerships. The 2025 AfriKin Art Fair is brought to you with the support of the Greater Miami Convention and Visitor Bureau (GMCVB) Art of Black Miami, Councilman Kevin Burns of District 1of the City of North Miami.

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