During Miami Art Week, one of the city’s busiest times of the year, a Black-owned art gallery in Little Haiti was vandalized with a spray-painted swastika and profanity.
Karla Ferguson, owner of Yeelen Gallery, realized on Saturday morning there was a hate symbol defacing the outside of the building.
“An officer was actually parked outside the building and I went up to his squad car and told him that he had to take a look,” Ferguson told Fair360, formerly DiversityInc. “He was visibly concerned and sympathetic to what it represented.
“I was told by the officer that this was likely going to be seen as a hate crime as the words ‘destroy,’ ‘f**k’ and the swastika were visible.”
Ferguson, who is also an attorney, is well known in the area for creating a space to celebrate artists of color that the traditional art world usually doesn’t include. She said she has “taken the business to the next level,” now known as the Yeelen Group.
“Yeelen promotes diversity we tell the stories of marginalized groups, we stand for women’s empowerment, we tell the stories from an African Diaspora perspective, LGBTQ rights and civil rights in general are represented when it comes to our exhibition programming,” explained Ferguson.
“For the hateful that don’t feel that we all deserve to be treated with respect, that don’t feel civil rights are to be upheld we could be seen as a threat. We are about valuing marginalized people and showing the worth and humanity of their contributions to society.”
Karla Ferguson, CEO, Yeelen Group
This is the first time a symbol of hate and threats have been directed toward her business. As Miami Art Week brings people all over the country into the area, it could have been locals or an outside influence.
Ferguson, whose business headquarters has been in Little Haiti since 2013, chose the neighborhood that is an area of Caribbean immigrants and locally owned shops, before gentrification started to occur.
Her activism through art and consulting is “aimed at providing exhibition and economic opportunities for all artists and particularly those that ask the tough questions, those that challenge our thinking and question inequities.”
As a Black woman and an activist, Ferguson said being confronted with hate during a time when it’s on the rise across the country only “reinforces that what I do is important, that I am on the right path.”
Last month, in Los Angeles, four swastikas were found painted across the face of a Crenshaw mural depicting Black women.
“I am an intelligent Black woman that has made a seat at the table,” Ferguson said. “My influence matters and that scares those that have to resort to fear tactics. I am the immigrant, the American Dream and there are people in our society that would love nothing more than to roll back the hands of time to when those that looked like me were considered three-fifths a human by law.”
The difficult part for Ferguson was explaining the symbol of hate to her young daughters.
“They were upset; it makes them feel unsafe,” she said. “I had to explain to my youngest what a swastika is and what it stands for. I reminded her that there are people who believe that one type of person is superior to others and that such thinking is wrong and ignorant. I told them that their ancestors survived far worse to make their lives possible and that we will continue to fight oppression and hold our heads up high while we do it.
“They know that I’m a fighter and they also know that they are as well, so we fight, we will continue to thrive, we Boss up.”
