All posts by Natalie Willis

By Dr Ian Bethell-Bennett

Migration, the moving image, the environment and cultural identity are all a part of the treasure chest of what could be referred to as national or cultural identity.  In the context of The Bahamas, cultural identity is distinct and unique because of the archipelagic nature of the country.  This, of course, takes into consideration all the nuances and complexities of the differences between–let’s say Bimini and Ragged Island–that have very little in common, but all form a part of what makes up Bahamian national identity. 

By Natalie Willis

Continuing on last week’s interview, the discussion builds on the rest of the body of work that Anina Major is producing for “We Suffer To Remain”, an exhibition featuring “The Slave’s Lament” (2015) by Scottish artist Graham Fagen alongside three Bahamian artists, Sonia Farmer and John Beadle included. Major’s work and much of the exhibition deals with the legacies of slavery as embodied by us as post-colonial subjects. This week she speaks to that embodiment, to pain, and to what it means to inhabit a Black feminine body in relation to the ideas brought up by this exhibition as well as recent events in the country.

By Malika Pryor Martin.The National Art Gallery of The Bahamas first introduced its mural programme in 2015 as part of a revamped and revitalised summer camp programme. The murals would remain on view at the NAGB for one year before another artist and group of creative campers replaced it the following summer with new ideas and concepts. Makers, who are both members of the NAGB team and professional artists beyond our walls, contributed to the campus effort. It served as inspiration for hundreds of young people and as creative fuel for the participating artists.

By Dr Ian Bethel Bennett.  The materiality of art and culture is essential to the experience with art and our understanding of the relationship between space, time and humanity.  When we do not see, feel or experience the materiality of space, we tend to ignore its existence.  Art can be used to bridge gaps between the materiality of experience and the historical omissions and erasures that leave the space open to deletion, and de-historicisation.  Music, similar to art, can speak to a similar materialising of experiences that have been wiped out by the passage of time and the shifting sands of spatial economic change.  The disappearance from the mental record of the Nassau Market is a salient example of the vanishing materiality and so the memory of that experience.  What remains is a space that has been razed of the material market and so the only vestiges remain. The artistic renderings and musical recitations of that material experience, where women and men walked over Market Street, often through Gregory’s Arch, to sell produce in the market, is what remains. 

By Natalie Willis. We often speak of Slavery in regards to one demographic in particular and the detrimental effects that remain today – and rightly so. It is a painful legacy, but it is also a shared one. “The Slave’s Lament,” written by Scottish poet and lyricist Robert Burns in 1792, is a song that spoke to this history in its own time. It is also the title of a work by another Scot, Graham Fagen, who used this song in his presentation at the 2015 Venice Biennale International Art Exhibition. This newer rendition, featuring Reggae artist Ghetto Priest and a string ensemble, serves as the focus and starting point for us to begin to discuss this history through a slightly different lens. The exhibition, “We Suffer To Remain,” opens in March and features Fagen’s artwork along with that of three Bahamian artists, namely: Sonia Farmer, John Beadle, and Anina Major

By Natalie Willis.   Rembrandt Taylor is truly a master of his craft. His meticulous attention to lines and cell-shaded blocks of colour is testament to his skill. His body of artwork generally contain references to Exodus, to Black kings and queens, to religion, and his beliefs as Rastafari are clear and given deference. The religious and social movement, which began in the 1930s in Jamaica, gives rich territory for explorations of faith and identity, of self, and Taylor doesn’t shy away from re-framing the conversation to suit his roots.

In this vein of celebration of Black histories of faith, “Defender of the Faith” (2001)—depicting St. George slaying the mythical dragon—would seem to be something of a contradiction. Why on Garvey’s green earth would a Rasta paint the patron saint of England in such detail? The image is iconic in art history, and the story is popular not just in England but across Europe – oddly enough, particularly in Russia and Georgia. Saint George, in Georgia, who’d have thunk it?