This week’s “Blank Canvas” features two more artists—Anina Major and Tamika Galanis—from the exhibition “Floating Rib” curated by Natalie Willis, which just opened at the NAGB. Anina is a transplanted Bahamian currently living and working in New York, who investigates the relationship between self and place as a site of negotiation. By utilizing the vernacular of craft to reclaim experiences and relocate displaced objects, her practise exists at the intersection of nostalgia and identity. Her work unpacks the emotional complexities inherent to the transcultural dialogue that surfaces when mapping the migration of traditions versus foreign influences Tamika Galanis is a documentarian and multimedia visual artist. A Bahamian native, Tamika’s work examines the complexities of living in a place shrouded in tourism’s ideal during the age of climate concerns. Emphasizing the importance of Bahamian cultural identity for cultural preservation, Tamika documents aspects of Bahamian life not curated for tourist consumption to intervene in the historical archive. This work counters the widely held paradisiacal view of the Caribbean, the origins of which arose post-emancipation through a controlled, systematic visual framing and commodification of the tropics.
“Floating Rib” is an exhibition that centres on the practices of Black women of The Bahamas, offering a moment to focus on the experience of Caribbean women negotiating their lives, identities, and creative practices elsewhere – and, often, between spaces.
“Blank Canvas” airs each Wednesday at 6:30 p.m. on Guardian Talk Radio 96.9FM.
