All posts by Natalie Willis

#WomenWednesdays highlights Bahamian women and our experiences in The Bahamas, specific to our identities including gender, race, sexuality, age, and ability. Held once per month at minimum, the events will draw women together to have conversations that bring our individual lives into focus while connecting to family, community, and national narratives.The Gender Equality panel kickstarted our event series, as a way to lay the foundation for later discussions.

Tilting Axis is a roving meeting, conceptualized by ARC Magazine and the Fresh Milk Art Platform Inc., that moves in and out of the Caribbean region on an annual basis. It brings together arts professionals who are interested in, and committed to, expanding contemporary visual art practice across all linguistic areas of the region. Participants include those based in the Caribbean and its diasporas, professionals working in the coastal rim of the Caribbean, as well as global professionals whose research and practice is influenced by the region. The goal of Tilting Axis is to facilitate opportunities for those who are living and working in the Caribbean, to increase interest and understanding of this region’s contemporary visual practice while contributing to a healthy cultural eco-system and purposeful growth for the Caribbean creative sector.

How do we forget that when we lose our tangible culture, we actually also lose our intangible culture?  They usually go together.  Culture is not just a product that we package and sell.  It is actually a process, a way of life, a rhythm that is embodied in a place.  Exuma and Long Island, Acklins and Bimini have very different rhythms. They do not all practice Rake ‘n’ Scrape the same way, nor do they cook the same dishes in the same fashion.  Boat building on Abaco is different from boat building in Long Island; each community has its own identity and rhythm that does not conform to national structures.

A fire-breathing hell-beast, a scaly winged thing of fantasy – sometimes good, sometimes dangerous and greedy: Dragons. Not a staple in the established subject matter for Amos Ferguson, but nonetheless a treasure in the National Collection, an entity worthy of having an epic flying reptilian guarding it for sure. Ferguson’s “The Dragon” (1991) is an outlier for a lot of reasons. While his usual practice includes references to biblical scenes, Bahamian folklore, and more often than not, Bahamian scenery – with the iconic titles painted in Bahamian vernacular that act as a mirror for our particular language traditions, this piece doesn’t quite typify his practice.

The University of The Bahamas and the National Art Gallery of The Bahamas have created an open space for group discussion that allows students to benefit from the offering of both spaces.  This relationship allows culture to truly be highlighted.  As much as we talk about culture, we often disconnect our experiences from talk. These lectures are designed to promote thought and unshackle minds blinkered by a dysfunctional system designed to create workers without a sense of self, or an identity that can transcend the 9 to 5 and the 21 by seven of the mundane. 

Kendra Frorup’s ‘Domestic Chickens’ (2007) installation is one of the lesser-known pieces in the National Collection. The 2017-2018 Permanent Exhibition, ‘Revisiting An Eye For The Tropics’, is a departure point for us to look to the way the past has informed the present aesthetic in Bahamian artwork, and also importantly to showcase the works in the National Collection and remind us of what we have ownership and pride over as Bahamians.

Bahamian artist, Margot Bethel, explores ideas of femininity and the roles of women from both past and present day. In “Portal: There’s a WHole in the Bucket”, Bethel transforms a collection of mundane, everyday objects into a sculptural installation proposing the idea of the hole and the whole, simultaneously describing aspects of gender inequality, female stereotypes, and objectivity.

During the first two months of 2017, The National Art Gallery of The Bahamas welcomed its newest staff members, Malika Pryor-Martin and Katrina Cartwright. Since their arrival, they have dived into their roles of Development and Communications Officer and Education Officer respectively, and have seamlessly integrated with the existing NAGB team.