By Blake Fox. Calling upon fear, surrender and angst, Tessa Whitehead presents us with an incredibly personal impression of her dreams, memories, and experiences in a transcendent series of figurative paintings in her first solo exhibition in The Bahamas titled “…there are always two deaths.”
By Blake Fox. Currently on display through June 2, 2019, at the National Art Gallery of The Bahamas (NAGB), the Permanent Exhibition “Hard Mouth: From the Tongue of the Ocean” focuses on how both verbal and visual language have shaped us as a country. One could argue that The Bahamas is a phonocentric culture, meaning speech is given precedence over written or visual work. Because of this emphasis on speech rather than written or visual work, it is no doubt that The Bahamas has a very rich oral culture. While Bahamians rely heavily on oral communication to pass down culture and traditions, visual and written works are just as crucial in communicating cultural beliefs and values in societies. This exhibition highlights Bahamian artwork that serves as a conduit to bridge the gap between our visual and oral culture in The Bahamas.
By Kevanté A.C. Cash, NAGB Correspondent. I am reminded of the challenges of life, even in moments of sheer bliss, reminded of the ways we cannot be, even in moments we are. I am reminded of the complexities of living in love a as Black, queer, artist, teacher, mother, sister, lover, friend, because it is all of these that comprise the human experience, yet none of these at all. I am reminded of themes of tried and proven love – over and over again in films such as Rafiki which in Swahili means “friend”. I would argue that the title itself was an act of intentionality and irony, as African culture, at a minimum, does not acknowledge the simple existence of queer love, in such coding lovers in terms such as “friend”. Above all of these though, I am reminded of just how boundlessly love can flow if given the space to manifest into something beautiful. Rafiki reminds me of the ways and trying times of love.
By Natalie Willis One of the key poses for women in classical painting is the reclining nude. It’s become such a huge part of the canon of European historical paintings, no doubt in part to the patriarchal obsession with the naked female form. Nonetheless, it’s been rich territory for many an earth-shattering painting in art history: Titian’s “Venus of Urbino” (1532-34), Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres’ “Grande Odalisque” (1814), and Manet’s infamous “Olympia” (1865), all of which changed the art world’s reading of the pose each time. It should come to us as no surprise then that Amos Ferguson, our beloved (and often misunderstood) intuitive painter from Exuma, might want to make his own mark in such territory, though perhaps more conservatively given his very religious background.
By Kevanté A.C. Cash, NAGB Correspondent . Artists Princess Pratt and Christine Wilson curate a night of poetic cultural expression to align with the theme of “The Fruit and The Seed” . Just when you thought the Ninth National Exhibition could not get any saucier—with artworks of daring themes brought forth to challenge the norms of a Bahamian society— poetic duo Saucy Expressions, represented by Princess Pratt and Christine Wilson, curates an evening of “Riddim n Tingum,” featuring rebellious words from Bahamian poets, musicians and writers, for a literary take on NE9’s “The Fruit and The Seed.” One of the two event organisers and performance poet, Princess Pratt, says her interest in wanting to organise an event like this stemmed from the fact that she had never seen a National Exhibition that featured performance poetry before. She wanted it to be an apparatus that bridged the gap between these seemingly separate worlds of artistry. So when the call came out, she and her creative business partner, Christine Wilson, conceived and presented a proposal to utilise the NAGB’s amphitheatre—Fiona’s Theatre—as a space for what would be called “Riddim n Tingum” for the NE9.
By Letitia M. Pratt,The D’Aguilar Art Foundation . Lynn Parotti’s Time Under Tension was a compact exhibition that communicated a profound message in its simplicity. All of the work shown was a homage to The Bahamas’ aquatic environment, which – according to ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies – is suffering major damage because of coral bleaching, a direct result of global warming. Nestled carefully in The D’Aguilar Art Foundation’s (DAF) intimate gallery space, Parotti’s new series of works, “Bahama Land” is a vibrant epitaph to the beauty of the Bahamian coral. Her seascapes are illustrated from the point of view of somebody who is just above the water looking down (perhaps over the hull of a boat), or right above the ocean floor. When confronted with the vibrancy and electric colours of these spaces, which are depicted with such indulgent, viscous applications of oil paint, the works speak like relics of the past.
By Katrina Cartwright. The Inter-Island Travelling Exhibition brings an intense week of activities to the second city. On April 2nd, 2019 the National Art Gallery of The Bahamas’ Inter-Island Travelling Exhibition (ITE) lands in Freeport, Grand Bahama, bringing with it an extensive community outreach agenda inclusive of our public mural programme, free workshops, a curator’s talk, school visits (primary and secondary) and donations of museum literature for art teachers, schools and public libraries. The NAGB was last in Grand Bahama in 2016 with “Max/Amos”, which was showcased at the Charles Hayward Library. Now in its fourth year, with a new exhibition, “Trans: A Migration of Identity”, the NAGB team is taking the travelling exhibition to our second city, where it will be on display at the Rand Nature Centre from April 5th – 26th, 2019.
We’re excited to welcome you to the Unveiling Ceremony for Dream Wall of Respect on Saturday, March 30th 2019 from 11am at Lend a Hand Bahamas on Lewis Street, Nassau, Bahamas. In September 2018, Transforming Spaces (TS) established a partnership with Lend a Hand Bahamas (LAHB), a registered nonprofit organization formed in 2014 to bring local, national, and international opportunities and activities into the community by running a core hands-on curriculum centered on 4H programming.
TS, under the leadership of Bahamian master artist Antonius Roberts, integrated art and culture into the LAHB programme and invited artists to create murals along the Wall of Respect that was initiated in 2014 by community resident and Junkanoo artist, the late Deon McHardy, aka ‘Slime’ whose artwork remains as drawn in his memory.
By Dr Ian Bethell-Bennett, The University of The Bahamas. The art of expression is as much a part of culture as is the art of weaving or straw work, yet we often overlook this. When someone says, “I ga beat you into next week,” the local colour is present, but the violent subtext is usually edited out. In Jamaican novelist, dramatist, critic, philosopher, and essayist Sylvia Wynter’s work “We must learn to sit down together and talk about a little culture” (Jamaica Journal, 1968) we see the commodification of art and culture. Yet, we have apparently progressed to the post-independence point where most pre-independence problems are ignored or cured by the shift. But the exploration of sitting down together demonstrates that we have not moved beyond the problems nor have they disappeared. Violence and violent dispossession remain realities, often ignored.
By Natalie Willis
“There are years that ask questions and years that answer.” ― Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
“Homecoming: Talking to the Dead” by Tamika Galanis becomes an answer to a much older question. Galanis’ work, in her careful, tender sifting-through of the Alan Lomax archive (consisting of a host of images and sound from his expedition to The Bahamas in 1935) at the Library of Congress became a response to Lomax’s curious call and questioning nearly 100 years ago. A Library of Congress Fellow, Galanis may be best known to some as “the lady with the shirts” – those Lignum + Tingum tees that serve up Bahamian dialect and lists of local flora and food – but for others she is far, far more – an artist, researcher, documentarian, and a seeker of truth. Coming across materials from this collection while she was undertaking her graduate studies, Galanis saw a letter from Lomax reporting his findings from his time in Nassau back to the Library of Congress (LOC), the start of her time following this thread that would lead her to a surprising connection to Zora Neale Hurston.