21 Artists Selected for the Eleventh National Exhibition at the NAGB

The National Art Gallery of The Bahamas (NAGB) is proud to announce the 21 artists selected for NELEVEN: Into the Void, opening 13 March 2025. 

For the past twenty years, the NAGB has committed itself to nurturing a healthy ecosystem for art and intellectual ingenuity in The Bahamas. The National Exhibition (NE) does just this; every two years, it provides a space for the museum to explore the latest in Bahamian creative and cultural expression and an opportunity to build its collection. The NE is an opportunity for Bahamian artists to show new works that reflect the current ethos of our community, and honours ambitious projects, like those in NELEVEN. Visitors can expect immersive installations and sculptural works alongside more familiar mediums like painting. This year’s theme, Into the Void, is not only a reflection of our current artistic climate but is also concerned with how our artists and their practices can grow in the future. 

With that, we welcome you on board the NELEVEN, a ship that travels INTO THE VOID. The Void can be thought of as nothingness, everywhere and nowhere, a space ripe for opportunity and growth. In physics, the void is the space between filaments (i.e. structures of the universe, such as galaxies), and it is this liminal space that connects everything. The concept of the Void is an apt analogy of Caribbean-ness; where the liminality we inhabit as a people forces us to constantly define and redefine ourselves. Voids, then, are a perfect space to birth new ideas, new creations, and new ways of life. 

This NE asks for contemporary artists to visualise these new ways of being through the lens of Caribbean Futurism. This imagining is already embedded in Bahamian identity—for around 100 years, after the Spanish arrived, kidnapped, and massacred the indigenous Lucayans that lived here, these islands sat in relative emptiness—a void waiting to be filled with people, culture, and histories. Quite literally, most people that currently live on these islands were born of a line of people that travelled into this void: and thus, like most Caribbean nations, our current culture developed from a rich intersection of peoples and cultures that settled these islands throughout our history. 

An open call went out on 4 July 2024, receiving over 60 submissions. From those submissions, curators Richardo Barrett and Letitia Pratt, along with a jury panel, chose the final 21 artists featured in this exhibition. 

Selected Artists 
Douglas Barkey 
Delton Barrett 
Jonnique Beadle 
Jenna Chaplin 
Jeremy Delancy 
Sonia Farmer 
Nelson Gray 
Marina Gottlieb Sarles 
Amaani Hepburn 
Kenneth Heslop 
Allan Jones 
Jordanna Kelly 
Regan Kemp 
KENECHI 
Ryan Lewis 
Jo Morasco 
Edrin Symonette 
Laurie Tuchel 
Eleanor Whitely 
Averia Wright 
Lemero Wright 

We invite you to join us on Thursday, 13 March 2025 at 6:30 pm for the opening of NELEVEN: Into the Void. Opening night is free and everyone is welcome to celebrate with us. 

Press Contact
Blake Belcher
bbelcher@nagb.org.bs