Natalie Willis, Author at National Art Gallery of The Bahamas

The Aesthetics of Debt: Double Consciousness and Vision in the age new a new modernity

24 September 2018 Natalie Willis

By Dr. Ian Bethell-Bennett, University of the Bahamas. We usually think of aesthetics in two ways: either the aesthetic pleasure of a work of art or the aesthetics of a period, style or artist. Time has moved on, however, and we are now forced to contemplate differently: the juxtaposition of unrelated ideas/concepts fit into a frame that gives them another meaning or gives us pause. It can be difficult to understand or grapple with the idea of oxymoronic contrast. However, in our daily lives we tend to witness the collapse of modernity in its premise of prosperity struck out by the super prosperous: the contrast between the local and the global.

Lavar Munroe’s “Son of the Soil” and Potcake Exhibitions opens at the NAGB.

12 September 2018 Natalie Willis

The public is invited to attend the opening reception of Lavar Munroe’s 10 Year Survey “Son of the Soil” at the National Art Gallery of The Bahamas (NABG) which features over 40 works from the last decade of the artist’s career. The exhibition opens on Thursday, September 13th at 7 pm and will have live entertainment, drinks and bites.

The art of connectivity: Sinking our roots further down.

11 September 2018 Natalie Willis

By Dr Ian Bethell-Bennett, The University of The Bahamas. Caribbean peoples have cultural links and subterranean rhizomes–a mass of roots– that connect the region to a larger reality. This is also articulated by Cuban poets and theorists like Nicolas Guillen and Antonio Benítez-Rojo. The ethnomusicologist and anthropologist Fernando Ortiz argues about transculturation and harmonious combined with deeply conflicting existences. We often flatten culture out into its artistic expression, removing any life from it; putting it in a museum and extracting its marrow. We thereby tend to fossilise and remove understanding of culture and its unique link to the place, time and people. So, Guillen, Ortiz and Glissant came up with understandings of culture that transcend limited material understanding. We also remove the multiplicity of experiences and histories from culture because so much of history and culture is limited to the official version as told by the coloniser.

From the Collection: “Cycle of Abuse” (2017) by Sonia Farmer

10 September 2018 Natalie Willis

By Natalie Willis. How does a referendum asking for men and women to be able to both gain rights in passing on citizenship, visibly backed by the government, still manage to fail? And what do we do in the aftermath? Sonia Farmer’s “Cycle of Abuse” (2017) is a paper work, but it is also time based, and the language employed is more than an exclamation, it is social commentary. She declares her status as a Bahamian citizen via text, and as a cisgendered woman she declares her womanhood through the monthly marking of blood upon these ballots. The blood represents not just her femininity and the rights denied her as a Bahamian woman, but also as a symbol of the various ways that violence is continued against women in this country.

The Art of Living in the Tropics, Part Three: Silence

5 September 2018 Natalie Willis

By Dr Ian Bethell-Bennett, The University of The Bahamas. Culture is the art of living in a place that speaks of experiences, adaptation and resilience. Culture is the unique expression of spatial and temporal identity or vice versa where a people perform life based on their history and geography. As people are increasingly marginalised through the expansion of capitalist desire into the tropics, the art of living there shifts from a national or an indigenous-peoples-based art to art of magazines and design. How do these things meet so that peoples and their cultures can thrive alongside gated out-sourced post-nationalist communities?

Teachers’ Seminar at the NAGB jump-starts the new school year

5 September 2018 Natalie Willis

By Katrina Cartwright. Public School Math Teachers spend some time at the NAGB. The education department at the National Art Gallery of The Bahamas fittingly began the new school year with a Teachers’ Seminar on August 21st -23rd that focused on teaching math through art and utilising the museum’s resources to enhance student learning. Over 65 junior high and high school math teachers from the public school system were in attendance as a part of their yearly summer professional development seminar.

The daily five-hour seminar incorporated a tour of the museum’s current Permanent Exhibition “Hard Mouth: From the Tongue of the Ocean,” a presentation on the techniques that can be used to integrate art and math and a series of activities that guided teachers through the various ways that the arts can be used to engage students in learning math. Each day ended with groups of teachers working together to formulate ideas that incorporated visual art into lessons that focused on a particular math topic.

From the Collection: “Untitled (Boat Scene)” (c.1920) by James “Doc” Sands

3 September 2018 Natalie Willis

By Natalie Willis

One would imagine this a typical scene along the Nassau coastline in the 1920s, as so much of our history – painful or profitable – was tied to the sea’s comings and goings. “Doc” Sands gives us what appears to be commonplace, but when we situate this image in the context of its time, and in our broader Bahamian history, things begin to take an exciting turn. Bottles and barrels that appeared to be ordinary fare now begin to remind us of prohibition and bootlegging, and the men shaking hands could very well be in the middle of a handoff. Of course, much of the imagery photographed at this time was staged out of necessity – things needed to be reasonably still for a prolonged time for the image to be taken appropriately. Was Sands staging this image of prohibition and illicit-alcohol Nassau at its roaring start?

James Osborne “Doc” Sands was born in 1885 in Rock Sound, Eleuthera, and is noted one of the first Bahamian photographers. The second of six children, his parents moved him to Nassau for what they felt to be a better education, and at age 18 he was handed over the photo studio of his mentor, American photographer Jacob Frank Coonley. Coonley and his contemporary William Henry Jackson (also American) were well known for their work, and now historically for their contributions to building and framing the picturesque, tropical images of The Bahamas at the start of its tourism industry, and Sands took up the mantle at a somewhat tender age.

NAGB Summer Camp comes to a close: Campers proudly show their work at the MMASC exhibition

29 August 2018 Natalie Willis

By Katrina Cartwright Families, supporters and sponsors fill Fiona’s Theatre for the opening of the 5th Mixed Media Summer Art

“When The Lionfish Came”: Tamika Galanis chimes in for the people of the reef in dangerously rising tides.

28 August 2018 Natalie Willis

By Natalie Willis. In Adelaide, there is a bell that has been ringing for at least a hundred years, but closer to two. Events, hurricanes, births and deaths, are all marked by the chime, and the proud denizens of this historic community for freed Blacks have, for generations, found themselves answering to its call. However, Tamika Galanis’ film, “When The Lionfish Came” (2015) is not a church bell…

It is an alarm.

Double Dutch “Hot Water” Opens!: Climate change, Ragged Island and vulnerable ecologies explored.

27 August 2018 Natalie Willis

By Holly Bynoe. The “Double Dutch” series supports the concept of bringing together local and regional artists, irrespective of where they are currently residing, to work with a group of ideas personal, political and otherwise crucial to the development of a contemporary Bahamian identity. These artists and collectives are often divided linguistically and geographically but are united by common historical, economic or practice-based conditions. For this reason, the National Art Gallery of The Bahamas (NAGB) pilot project attempts to create and maintain ties throughout the Caribbean and its more extensive diaspora.