By Kevanté A. C. Cash, NAGB Correspondent. The National Art Gallery of The Bahamas (NAGB) continues to provide a platform and be a safe space for artists across all genres to lay bare the sentiments of the heart through thematic responses to exhibition calls that seek to engage the wider Bahamian populace. Gabrielle Banks, student artist at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), took the opportunity of submitting works into the ninth National Exhibition (NE9) “The Fruit and The Seed” as a way to vocalise her thoughts and opinions and to heal from past pains and traumas. Furthermore, the artist also intended to inspire a discourse that is oftentimes swept underneath the rug and left for the minority of society to engage in.
By Natalie Willis. Reclining nudes, women posed ‘just so,’ we’re all quite accustomed to this kind of figuration and portraiture in the art world. Even those of us who are just dipping our toes into the wonders of the art world associate art with this kind of imagery. Art students at universities the world over can be found squinting in deepest concentration, poring over their depictions of a nude model before them – often a woman – and trying to figure out form, perspective, how to capture the ‘essence’ of this stranger they’ve met. It’s part of the canon, in many ways.