The Miami Art Blog by Heike Dempster

The I AM WYNWOOD Project, created by Miami Artist Barbara M de Varona in October, 2012, began as an on-going collection of stylized portraits depicting the personalities and artful contributions of people in the Wynwood Art Community. Today, a social media expansion of the original project is headed by Barbara, Miami Artist Buddah Funk and Amy Arce. Through the use of interactive social media platforms - Instagram, Tumblr, Flickr, Twitter and Facebook - the project seeks to engage the participation of the community itself....

Via the use of the #iamwynwood hashtags, people can share their own Wynwood experience, using social media to involve the whole community... Buddah Funk and Amy Arce have joined me in moderating Twitter, Flickr, Tumblr etc... and in this 'collaborative' way I'm more than happy to return to my drawings and finish what I started, proudly...

What: I AM WYNWOOD ‘Share YOUR Wynwood’ Photo Contest

For Art Basel Miami Beach 2012 I decided to create a series of portraits under the unified title “I am Wynwood.” After the first initial 15 portraits I took a bit of a hiatus from the project. There are actually 50 names in the series that I am going to start and finish. I took the hiatus because I wasn’t saying what I wanted to say as loud as I wanted to say it. That is what got me to stop and pause and get to know the community a bit better and in the process made some really good friends and developed a bigger vision. I really wanted for the community to take that statement of “I Am Wynwood,” and internalize it and make it their own and see themselves in it.

With the help of Buddha Funk and Amy Arce we branched the project out to a social media platform. People can hashtag their photographs and share their Wynwood. So many photographers and people who come through the area focus on the walls, the beautiful murals, which of course are there to be enjoyed but there is more. You go deeper and Wynwood is about community, a sense of belonging. There is an unusual dynamic that, I at least, haven’t found anywhere else. I have an analogy that Wynwood is kind of like a home. It has a very homey feeling. Invariably you run into people the way that you do when you visit your parents and then your cousins show up. Doesn’t this feel like family? I have only been here for three years but when I first got here I just fell in love with the nature of the place.

Through the use of social media we are trying to get everyone, from the person that is serving the beer to the person that is ordering it, to just take that ideal on and embrace it. Sort of the “I love New York” of Wynwood. It is community pride. By hashtagging your photo you join in the collective celebration. We did a little slogan: “ Am Wynwood. Celebrating Wynwood one face, one place at a time.” The concept is that eventually everybody will be sharing their photos and hashtagging.

The reason why we started the contest is that we wanted to get people stoked about saying to themselves “I am Wynwood.” We thought it would be cool to encourage people to share their photographs. Maybe you have some crazy pictures of a night out with your friends or from the last Artwalk and it is a picture of you having a great time. We want you to share it and be part of the “I am Wynwood” project.