Starting our internship, another intern, Ashante, and I were given a brief tour of the grounds in order to familiarize ourselves with the building and its history. We also read catalogues concerning exhibitions that were on display at the time to get an idea of what has been happening inside the gallery, as well as gain some knowledge about famous Bahamian artists.
Monday June 24th signifies the day I stepped into a whole new world of art that I have been blind to all my life. On this day, I took a step towards my future. On this day, I became an intern at the National Art Gallery of The Bahamas. At first I had no clue what exactly to expect during this eye-opening journey. Of course I knew art would be involved, but I also knew that there was more to it.
Jace McKinney’s work visually echoes the Biblical narrative of the Hebrews being delivered by God from the hands of the Egyptians where they sang a song of praise that became known as “The Song of Moses”. Mckinney’s choir is constructed from plaster molds made from the heads of young children from a grass-roots community and subsequently turned into 21 makeshift lamps. McKinney’s work acts as a metaphor for the innate divinity of the culture of youth and a call for us to elevate ourselves from our collective cynicism.
This gallery delves into the sub-theme of balance, which in matter of Kingdom Come itself is tied to spirituality; be it societal, individual or the lack thereof. Finding Balance, Tyrone Ferguson’s aluminum sculpture distinctly focuses on this theme. The balancing of a white disc and a black disc shows the constant point of equilibrium that we all try to find in our lives on a daily basis, and seeing that the figure is on a tight rope this stability is reiterated with other things that may be occurring in the world/society, that we walk the tight rope in hopes to survive.
How do you rise above life’s dramatic changes and transitions with a smile on your face or a shred of hope? Some suggest that we don’t rise above them at all but instead move with these changes, these minor and major apocalypses. Joseph Campbell philosophizes that we have to dive into the fire to find our treasure. Many of the artists in this space have dived into an abyss of some kind. Whether it be the exposure of Bahamian societal issues in Kishan Munroe’s “Beacon of Hope”, physical and emotional turmoil in Kendra Frorup’s installations “Duran Duran” and “A Constant Internal Smile” or Dede Brown’s study of rebirth in her installation “Chaos is the law of nature; Order is the dream of man”, on the most basic level these works speak to our natural human instinct for persistent survival in the midst of change.
Inside the Ballroom, located in the front of NE6: Kingdom Come, visitors are encouraged to participate in the exhibition by answering a series of questions. In these questions we ask viewers, Who Is Their Greatest Hero Of Fiction? And What Is Your Motto?
Our NE6: Kingdom Come exhibition catalogue isn’t a stereotypical tome. Like the artists and artworks it represents, the catalogue is a contemporary take on a traditional book.
Mixed Media is dedicating the next 3 posts to the hardworking interns that assisted us in the summer!