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“That Vodou that who do?”: Ancestry, heritage, memory, and light in the work of Eric Jean-Louis.

16 January 2018 Articles

By Natalie Willis.  Eric Jean-Louis (b. 1957) is an artist hailing from Haiti, well-known and much loved and it is easy to see why. His work is filled with the human and natural balance of light and dark,  the duality we all struggle with and that we see in the world and in ourselves. Visually, his work packs a graphic punch with his style of shading blocks of dark and adding bright stripes and slivers of light – and they are really a stunning sight to behold. To those who find themselves cringing and shying away from the word Voodoo, as in the title of this piece “Ceremonie de Bois Cayman: The Voodoo Still Lives” (2007) by Jean-Louis, it would remiss to deny and write off this practice of art and spirituality. There is light to be found in this form of spirituality, which is so often, and erroneously, deemed ‘dark magic’. As the current exhibition, “Medium: Practices and Routes of Spirituality and Mysticism” seeks to uncover the complexities of religious and spiritual practice in the region, so does this painting lay plain the crossovers and awkwardness of our relationship as Caribbean peoples to our African heritage.

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Majority Rule: A Snapshot of Our Identity

15 January 2018 Articles

By Dr Ian Bethell-Bennett.  The Bahamas, according to the discourse, is a Black country.  Majority Rule was established in 1967 and, since then, the language of nationalism has been extremely narrow, exclusive and definitive.  Before the power of the majority was inculcated into the halls of Parliament, the language was very different, and usually overlooked the Black population, except as inferior subordinates.  However, the face of The Bahamas, while changing, has changed little when seen through messages deployed through art.  Yes, art has evolved and developed.  The understanding that the Majority are people too, after the end of slavery and the permitting of souls into Black folk was not as earth shattering as one might have expected.  The artistic document, though, speaks of differences and similarities of seeing and unseeing that depends little on one’s majority or minority status, but rather on the depth and wealth of one’s artistic practice.  Many artists chose to include the more comprehensive and complete vision and voice of The Bahamas. Some chose to ignore or exclude.  The nationalist discourse chose to do the latter.

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The Power of Imprisonment through language: The Eye for the Tropics and Majority Rule in The Bahamas

10 January 2018 Articles

By Dr Ian Bethell Bennett.  “We believe that rape is a private matter and that women are inherently unequal.” As 2017 passed into memory this last week, it seems important to think about how we see ourselves in the future.  Spirituality could play a large part in this vision, or we could simply choose to continue along what seems to be a road paved with consumerist joy. The paradise myth is part and parcel of that consumerism: where beaches and bodies of paradise that we need to survive can be bought, sold, bartered, negotiated away and given to other sovereign states for their own devices. The opening of “Medium: Practices and Route of Spirituality and Mysticism” at the National Art Gallery of The Bahamas (NAGB) on December 14, 2017 presented a moment for reflection, but also for a new focus.  When we can celebrate Bahamian ‘masters’ Tony McKay aka “Exuma” or “The Obeah Man,” Amos Ferguson, Wellington Bridgewater and Netica “Nettie” Symonette, along with a boat-load–used intentionally–of other artists, we are saying that perhaps we are changing the way we see ourselves. 

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Sitting with the Dead: “Medium,” a show of Bahamian Religion and Spirituality

4 December 2017 Articles

By Dr Ian Bethell Bennett. Tie a black piece of cotton around the child’s wrist, Don’t walk outside at night without covering the child’s head, Be careful how you come into the house at night, Wipe your feet off well. Cover the mirrors with cloth, Open the house if the coffin comes by, let the spirit travel through, Rosemary helps keep away bad-minded things… To our mind, these are all local lore.  To many, these are discredited as they are lumped together with Obeah and dismissed as ‘evil, black, Dark and African.’  Our double-consciousness denies the survival or the importance of such cultural elements as Asue, Lodges, Burial Societies, Friendly Societies, all of which allowed our spiritual and physical survival during and after slavery.

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