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.
Blank Canvas: April 28th, 2021 featuring Anina Major and Tamika Galanis
Currently browsing: Tamika Galanis
Blank Canvas: February 5th, 2020, Tamika Galanis
On tonight’s Blank Canvas, your regular host Amanda Coulson (left) catches up with Bahamian documentarian Tamika Galanis (right), who is one of the artists participating in the current exhibition “Refuge,” currently on show at the NAGB. Tamika catches us up on her artistic journey and where the archives have led her in her current research project.
Talking to the Dead: Tamika Galanis’ repatriates materials from the Alan Lomax archive and brings them home.
By Natalie Willis
“There are years that ask questions and years that answer.” ― Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
“Homecoming: Talking to the Dead” by Tamika Galanis becomes an answer to a much older question. Galanis’ work, in her careful, tender sifting-through of the Alan Lomax archive (consisting of a host of images and sound from his expedition to The Bahamas in 1935) at the Library of Congress became a response to Lomax’s curious call and questioning nearly 100 years ago. A Library of Congress Fellow, Galanis may be best known to some as “the lady with the shirts” – those Lignum + Tingum tees that serve up Bahamian dialect and lists of local flora and food – but for others she is far, far more – an artist, researcher, documentarian, and a seeker of truth. Coming across materials from this collection while she was undertaking her graduate studies, Galanis saw a letter from Lomax reporting his findings from his time in Nassau back to the Library of Congress (LOC), the start of her time following this thread that would lead her to a surprising connection to Zora Neale Hurston.
The Blank Canvas, December 28: Steven Schmid, Gio Swaby and Tamika Galanis
Continuing our series of shows highlighting Bahamian artists living abroad that are participating in the Eighth National Exhibition (NE8), on this week’s “Blank Canvas” show Amanda gets to listen to the stories of Steven Schmid (far left) and Giovanna Swaby (second from right), who both recently graduated with a BFA in Film, Video and Integrated Media from Emily Carr University in Vancouver, British Columbia, and Tamika Galanis, who recently graduated with a Master of Fine Arts in Documentary and Experimental Arts from Duke University.