All posts by Natalie Willis

“To Throw Rocks” Exhibition Opening at UB

18 November 2019

To Throw Rocks, curated by Matthew Rahming, is an exploration of wider Black masculinities. In unpacking the tropes around Black masculine identities in The Bahamas, through a survey of practices ranging from the 70s to now, this selection puts particular focus on love, sex and sexuality, tenderness, labor and violence. The exhibition features work by Rashad Adderley, John Beadle, Justin Benjamin, Tyesha Brooks, Blake Fox, Amaani Hepburn, Allan Jones and Rashad Leamount, Jodi Minnis, Heino Schmid, Jarette Stubbs and Bradley Wood. In an effort to widen the scope of voices present, artwork from the National Collection, The Collection of the University of the Bahamas and the Brenton Story Collection have been drawn from to round out the conversation in its fullness. These voices come together to acknowledge the powers and privileges (or lack thereof) at play, to face the vulnerability, to bring awareness to responsibility, and to address conflicts around what it means to exist as a man, particularly a black man, in The Bahamas. To Throw Rocks opens on Thursday, November 21st at 5:30pm in the Franklin Wilson Graduate Centre on the University of the Bahamas’ Oaksfield Campus as a part of in conjunction with the 8th annual Critical Caribbean Symposium Series. The exhibition will run until December 2019. For more information, please feel free to contact Matthew Rahming at mr.matthew.rahming@hotmail.com

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I’s Man: Ian Strachan’s documentary on masculinity in The Bahamas captures the polemics of today’s ‘Man Crisis’. 

11 November 2019

By Dr Ian Bethell-Bennett, University of The Bahamas. English Social Sciences organised a screening and panel discussion of the film I’s Man at the University of The Bahamas on Wednesday, November 6th, at 6:00 p.m. The room was packed as students and faculty from sociology, psychology, English and the general public came out to discuss the current ‘man crisis’.  The film captures perspectives from multiple angles that discuss the imagery of black masculinity and its descriptors from objectifying women in batty riders to murder for glory because of ego issues: the intersections of sexuality and socio-cultural and economic pressures conflate to conform to roles society perceives as normal and in turn normalises.  If men do not consume women like that, something must be wrong with them.  Much is documented in the film of the ways black masculinities are defined and controlled by a capitalistic, hegemonic racialised system that seeks to disempower through weaponised messaging and stereotyping. Meanwhile, the documentary reveals this underside. 

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The Sea as Life: Cargo and VLOSA

4 November 2019

By Dr. Ian Bethell-Bennett, The University of The Bahamas. It is the Visual Life of Social Affliction that speaks out against silence imposed over death. Undocumented death. If one lives an undocumented life, does one die an undocumented death? 

The sea as life

One is buoyed on by levity, not dropped like a lead weight to the bottom of the sea, where there are souls that link from Africa to the New World and back again. These disembodied figures, souls linking lands, the submarine link, or submerged mother of Edward Brathwaite’s creation bind us together. They travel up from Haiti through the Ragged Island passage to northern shores. This is life suspended in a watery elixir of death and blue green beauty: the irony of nature.    

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Peggy Hering’s “Lilies” (1984): On Being Both Student and Teacher

28 October 2019

By Natalie Willis

The Caribbean is in many ways a place of and for the nomadic. There is an irony then in the way that American artist Peggy Hering found herself referencing Claude Monet’s water lilies with her own “Lilies” (1984), which were painted at his home for the last 30 years of his practice. The jarring difference between those seemingly shifting, moving art makers, and those who stand stock-still devoting time to the exact opposite which is the enduring, is all presented to be considered in Hering’s dreamy landscape. Some may be familiar with her work gifted to us from the FINCO commissions of scenes Over-the-Hill, but Hering and her work are a little elusive for those of us who weren’t around in Nassau in the 70s and 80s when Hering lived here. This gem in the Dawn Davies Collection is a good departure point for probing into the life of this expatriate artist. 

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From the Collection: “Solomon” (2000) by Stan Burnside

21 October 2019

By Natalie Willis. King Solomon, the biblical king of Israel, is revered in Christianity, Judaism, Islam and Rastafarianism alike. A wealthy and wise man (the latter of which people the world over feel are missing in leadership), he was known for his sense of justice and morality, and perhaps most famously known for settling a dispute between two women who fought over the guardianship of a child. We’ve most often seen this son of David, the successor to the throne, depicted as a wizened old man with a beard, looking every inch the grandfather. Why then, do we seem to get such contrasting reactions to Stan Burnside’s “Solomon” (2000) in our space? People claim to love the large scale work or despise it. We’ve had to move it from external spaces on loan because it was seen as “too much” or disconcerting – which feels rather unsettling for our dear Gallery + Collections Assistant, Matthew Rahming, whose likeness is often compared to that of Burnside’s king. 

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Adaptability & Draughts(woman)ship: Kachelle Knowles Builds a Practice of Representation That Takes Action

14 October 2019

By Natalie Willis. We are not used to seeing ourselves outside of the lens of tourism as Bahamians. This is troublesome for a newly-independent nation not yet 50 years old, and with 200 years of tourism weighing in above our heads. The decolonial work of imaging ourselves as Bahamians (particularly as Black Bahamians) is slow-going but gaining more visibility. The representation for many of our Black non-Bahamian people of this nation is in a more dire state. These observations and lines of questioning are brought to the forefront in Kachelle Knowles’ delicate and tenderly draughted portraits of the Black Bahamian man in her body of work for “Bahamian Man Since Time,” which recently closed in the NAGB’s Project Space. In the aftermath of Hurricane Dorian and its painful shifts and turns – and in the museum’s efforts to respond appropriately to hurricane efforts, we wanted to share some words on the exhibition as it became the site of a donation centre for Equality Bahamas and Lend-A-Hand Bahamas. These works were the backdrop to so many of your efforts to assist and to be supported.

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Create Space: Art as Therapy

8 October 2019

By Zearier E. Munroe. Exploring art materials with therapeutic thinking. Dorian was the most unnatural of natural disasters to batter this country. The hardest hit islands of Abaco and Grand Bahama will be recovering for years, but they won’t have to do it alone. In the days and weeks following the storm, the power of community and the outpouring of financial, emotional and spiritual support for those affected has been the very epitome of “Bahamas Strong.” And, in this moment of physical and emotional turmoil, the value of a safe space cannot be calculated. Understanding this, the education team at The National Art Gallery of The Bahamas (NAGB) partnered with the incomparable Art Psychotherapist, Susan Moir Mackay, a former resident of Grand Bahama for twenty years. The result of this partnership was Create Space under NAGB’s We Gatchu!: Sanctuary After The Storm initiative. The aim of Create Space was to designate and design areas where participants could explore art materials in a therapeutic way. We prioritised the creation of this space within the shelters, while we reaffirmed the availability of the NAGB property as a haven for all who are in need. As it has long been the mission of the NAGB to use the sanctuary of its halls to uplift and inspire through art. 

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Open Call for “Refuge”: The NAGB stages a call for artwork as we recover, rebuild and restore the nation’s spirit.  

7 October 2019

By Holly Bynoe

September 1, 2019…the day that the sky opened up and tried to swallow a country.

– Bernard Ferguson. Hurricane Dorian Was a Climate Injustice. New Yorker, September 2019

The National Art Gallery of The Bahamas acknowledges the dawning of a new chapter in our country’s history after the passage of Hurricane Dorian. Collectively we have made a decision to suspend our planned exhibition for the end of the year and rather, extend an open call to our creative community to start a larger conversation on the personal and collective impacts after the passage of the storm. This new era has led us to explore the mission of the NAGB even further and what it means to be a socially responsible institution in the age of climate crisis. We are a population on ground zero of this transformation, and as we work to regroup, reconcile and rebuild–now and into the future–the NAGB commits to providing safe space for all who rise within the nation’s borders to heal, to be seen and heard through creating.  

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Hope Is All Around Us

30 September 2019

Bahamian and Caribbean artists from all genres are coming together to uplift The Bahamas through hurricane relief efforts post-Dorian.

By Kevanté A.C. Cash, NAGB Correspondent. It seems as though visual artist and muralist Angelika Wallace-Whitfield may have been foreshadowing with her Ninth National Exhibition (NE9) public art project: “Hope Is A Weapon.” During these trying times, the words that the artist penned to elaborate on the work finds us at a convenient moment and feels all too real. Much like the pressing issue placed on the backs of our nation’s leaders, Bahamians who have not been severely affected by the storm and the global world who is watching.

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