NAGB team member Katrina Cartwright shared an interesting assessment about a delightful work of art currently on display at your favorite museum. Stay tuned for more posts and activities!!
By Natalie Willis. “i learn urgently | the architecture of loss | then find you again.” ― Warsan Shire. Lavar Munroe’s “Memorials” series is an exercise in the architecture of loss, of remembering, and the residue of life we leave long after we are physically gone from this world. A parachute, a hand-made urn, and flowers are an unlikely pairing but help to braid together the strands of the story of a man’s life, but they also offer us a thread between worlds, between countries, between lives, and between times. Munroe–proud of his upbringing and regular reunions with the Grants Town community where he still holds a studio–spends much of his time these days travelling. Not unlike the parachute shown in “Return: The Magic Flight” (2018), he is uprooted, but he often finds his way back to the solid soil of this historic settlement in Nassau. The “nation’s navel” that is Bain and Grants Town have produced a number of historically significant figures in Bahamian history, and Lavar is well on his way to being a key fixture in Bahamian art history for years to come, if his current 10 year survey at the NAGB (with the proud and proclamatory title “Son of the Soil”) is any indication.
By Natalie Willis. They may appear to be things of fantasy, with their glittering feathered wings, beads, embellishments, and horns adorning those who look to be less than the usual hooved suspects, but Lavar Munroe’s “Specimens” series find their footing in the real world through their presentation, and indeed through their representation. By investigating through fantasy and myth the repercussions and implications of the waves of colonialism on this landscape, first with Columbus, but also alluding to British colonialism with the museum-style classifications and taxonomies of these fair and strange imagined beasts, Munroe’s “specimens” give us a moment to really think beyond the horrific impact on humans and into the broader ecology of The Bahamas.
Tonight on Blank Canvas, host Amanda Coulson is in the studio with artist Lavar Munroe talking about his upcoming exhibition “Lavar Munroe: Son of the Soil, a 10-year Survey” which is opening at the NAGB on Thursday, September 13th.
The public is invited to attend the opening reception of Lavar Munroe’s 10 Year Survey “Son of the Soil” at the National Art Gallery of The Bahamas (NABG) which features over 40 works from the last decade of the artist’s career. The exhibition opens on Thursday, September 13th at 7 pm and will have live entertainment, drinks and bites.
On this week’s “Blank Canvas,” Amanda is visited in the studio by Bahamian artist Lavar Munroe.
Born and raised in Grant’s Town, Munroe has been moving from strength-to-strength on the global stage and is well-known in international art circles, having participated in the prestigious Venice Biennale, as well as having had museum and gallery shows. He studied at SCAD (Savannah College of Art and Design) and completed a Masters at Washington University in St. Louis in 2013. Since then he has had a studio practice based largely in the United States.
By Keisha Oliver. Interdisciplinary artist Lavar Munroe grew up in the Grants Town community of Nassau, The Bahamas, and has lived and worked in the United States for over thirteen years. Munroe’s work exists as a reflection of the environment of his upbringing and presents an ongoing critique on contemporary society and its relationships between the people of the ghetto and the ‘Others.’ He maps and celebrates his personal journey of survival and fortitude from the heart of the ‘Over-the-Hill,’ community whilst confronting broader issues concerning social stereotypes
Lavar Munroe’s “The Migrant” is an illustrative portrayal of a spindle-legged, knock-kneed nomad carrying his home on his back. In many ways, the tale this digital print tells of the ubiquitous image of the immigrant is reminiscent of the Phil Stubbs classic song, ‘Cry of the Potcake.” The xenophobia and self-hate we deal with as a nation is quite easily summated in the lyrics of the catchy tune, “they don’t love me, they only know me when they need me,” and Munroe’s look at the struggle of the emigrant bolsters this when we think of our history as forced immigrants. For instance, can we image our Bahamas without teachers, nurses and doctors from elsewhere in the region working alongside those we consider to be ‘born’ Bahamians?
Lavar Munroe was born in 1982 in Nassau, The Bahamas, and currently lives and works in Maryland, USA. His works have been exhibited at the Venice Biennale, Italy; Nasher Museum of Art, USA; and the SCAD Museum of Art, USA. He graduated with a BFA from the Savannah College of Art and Design in 2007 and then earned an MA at Washington University in St. Louis. Alongside 5 other Bahamian artists, Munroe represented The Bahamas in the country’s first appearance at the Liverpool Biennale and has been awarded numerous prestigious prizes including a Joan Mitchell Foundation Painting and Sculpture Grant, a Fountainhead Residency and most recently a Post Doc Fellowship at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. In other words, Munroe is on the up and up, his star now brighter than it has ever been.