All posts by Natalie Willis

By Dr Ian Bethell-Bennett, The University of The Bahamas. The 2018 Creative Time Summit under the theme “On Archipelagos and Other imaginaries: Collective Strategies to Inhabit the World” was livestreamed at the National Art Gallery of The Bahamas (NAGB) and coupled with key local academics, including Dr Niambi Hall Campbell-Dean, Dr Allana Thomas and Joey Gaskins and other creatives discussing our present-day national realities. The day provided much fodder for digestion and provoked upset, and it was a necessary light bulb that came on or an explosion that went boom in the night. Also, we all know how those booms go. We wake up startled and unable to get back to sleep. The many conversations were alive and inspiring; it also caused great unease because of the themes explored: spatial injustice, erasure of black and brown bodies and the real threat of climate change and sea level rise along with the erosion of democracy.  It is always interesting for me that Miami, often such a conservative space, can produce such edgy and cutting cultural expression and creative experimentation. 

By Dr Ian Bethell-Bennett, The University of The Bahamas. Bahamian society and culture are already deeply creolised and vibrant, so why not make every effort, take every chance to show who we are?  In the 1980s Barbadian calypsonian Gabby performed ‘Jack’, and people laughed.  In the early 2000s Bahamian performer K. B. sang ‘Dey Sellin’, and people laughed. In fact people criticised him for exaggerating. ‘Dey sellin’… culture captures what we do not see.  Oral and aural culture deliver serious critical visions and versions on what a go on, as the calypsos of the Trinidadian ‘Trinity’ Mighty Sparrow, Shadow and Chalkdust made critical often blistering interventions in all matters of national concern.  Today, we hide from this kind of cultural richness or defame it.  In “Apocolypso”–first published in 2004 and recirculated in 2013–Christian Campbell highlights the shifting tides and sands of Bahamian landscape and the accompanying cultural erosion and erasure. 

By Kevanté A. C. Cash. A laid-back woman comes from the behind the building to greet me upon hearing the call of her name. She is stationed on the benches of the National Art Gallery’s back porch overlooking the Sculpture Garden – just above the newly opened Amphitheatre named “Fiona’s Theatre” – that opens to Hospital Lane.  Sporting a cool summer dress in the middle of Bahamian fall, she says she was “soaking up the sun and catching up on messages” while waiting for my arrival.  She is Sasha Dees, a Dutch independent curator, festival and theatre producer and arts writer, currently doing research across the Caribbean. “The research that I’m doing is actually not a part of anything. It’s really in my interest. So, what happens is there’s a mid-career grant – the governmental visual art fund – that’s there for artists but also people working within the arts like curators, writers and so on to take some time off to do something they always wanted to do but never found the time or had the money to do. “So, often it was more so museum workers giving themselves a chance to take a sabbatical to maybe write a book or do more research on a subject that’s within the museum. It’s very rare for people like me to get the grant because I’ve always worked independently but when I thought again, I figured – ‘There still might be a possibility.’”

By Dr Ian Bethell-Bennett, The University of The Bahamas. Art and design, though they seem to make strange bedfellows, work hand in glove, and, along with literature, carve out space for exceptional spatial and design shifts that move people into new possibilities. The 2018 iteration of the annual regional collaborative project “Double Dutch” titled “Hot Water,” combines the work of Plastico Fantastico (PF) and Expo 2020 team from University of The Bahamas.  The teams spent a week travelling to and from Ragged Island researching what it might look like to rebuild in stronger and more resilient ways in the wake of Hurricane Irma.  The project combined students and faculty, as well as members from PF and we interviewed committee and community members and spent hours and then days creating and distilling ideas for the exhibition.  What finally stands in the Ballroom of the National Art Gallery of The Bahamas (NAGB) is weeks of contact and ideation, with that, a lot of experimentation to see how best to construct and meet new demands.