The Ellies

Michael Richards Award

Named after Oolite alum Michael Richards (1963 – 2001), this award is given to a Miami-Dade artist who has created a recognized body of original, high-quality works of art over a sustained period of time and who, through their practice, is achieving the highest levels of professional distinction in visual arts. The award will support the artist’s practice with $75,000.

The Michael Richards Award is a nomination based award, given to a Miami-Dade artist who has created a recognized body of original, high-quality works of art over a sustained period of time and who, through their practice, is achieving the highest levels of professional distinction in visual arts. This artist is someone who has established and sustained their practice in Miami and has given back to the community throughout their career in a variety of ways. The award will support the selected artist’s practice and creative growth through a stipend of $75,000 over a two-year period.

Michael Richards (1963 – 2001), to whom this award pays tribute, was an incisive, provocative, and poetic artist whose body of work primarily addresses racial inequity and social injustice. Richards, an Oolite Arts alum, passed away tragically in his art studio in the World Trade Center during the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. A jury of national and local curators and experts will both nominate candidates and select the award winner.

Current Winner

José Bedia was born on January 13, 1959, in Havana, Cuba, where he grew up and studied in the capital district of Luyanó in the municipality of 10 de Octubre. From an early age, he excelled in drawing, comics, and illustration, and as a teenager, he joined the famous San Alejandro Academy.

Bedia graduated with honors from the ISA, Instituto Superior de Arte de la Habana, Cuba. He pioneered the radical transformation of Cuban Art that inaugurated the Exhibition Volumen 1, which Bedia was an integral part of. His passion for the primal Amerindians complemented his anthropological studies on Afro-Transatlantic cultures, studying in-depth the faith, beliefs, and religion of the “La Regla Kongo” (in which he was initiated in 1983), the “Regla de Ocha,” and the Leopard Society of Abakuá, among many others.

He traveled to Angola as part of the International Cultural Brigades, which supported the struggle of the Angolan-Cuban War against Namibia and South Africa. This contact with the mother continent and the war increased his interest in the African roots of American culture. This interest took him to visit countries such as Peru, Mexico, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Zambia, Botswana, Kenya, and Tanzania. After residing in Mexico, he moved to Miami, Florida, where he now lives.

Bedia’s decisive and precise skill as a draftsman, striking pictorial capacity, and enigmatic and enveloping installations position him as one the most notorious and prestigious creators of art from the second half of the 20th century to the present. This vast knowledge marks his work and shows how cultural heritage influences our daily lives. His work merges his tribal and ethnographic interests, combining fieldwork with social and historical elements of many world traditions.

His work has been exhibited in the La Habana, Sao Paulo, Venice, and Beijing Biennales, where he has received awards and acclamation. His works are in important public and private collections including: the Museo Nacional Palacio de Bellas Artes (Havana, Cuba); MoMA, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Guggenheim Museum (New York City); Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, (Washington, D.C.); Tate Modern (London, UK); Colección Daros (Zurich); MEIAC, DA2, IVAM, CAAM (Spain); MOCA and PAMM (Miami).