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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

Though artist and educator Kendra Frorup may be using the imagery of the banana flower in her work in “NE9: The Fruit and the Seed”, this is anything but a literal interpretation of this year’s theme. Frorup cleverly takes the image of the banana plant – whose fruit is rife with symbolism in the Caribbean and the world over – but takes on its less represented anatomy, the flower, and gives this to the audience for consideration. The plant that has become iconic in the region with slavery and plantations, as well as the more base and salacious hypersexualised iconography emerging from the difficult tropes the slavery era brought forth that we are still forced to contend with today.

By Natalie Willis. This year’s National Exhibition (NE), “NE9: The Fruit and The Seed”, took time to cultivate, to bear fruit, and much care was taken in tending to the roots of art in The Bahamas. The NE serves as a thermometer or litmus test, a finger on the pulse of what is happening in our creative culture here. Of the 38 artists showing work, one particular “fruit” was very, very big indeed.

Heino Schmid’s contribution to the 9th National Exhibition “NE9: The Fruit and the Seed” is, in short, meta. Allow me to explain. His three monumental drawings (measuring in at 9  feet tall by 5 feet wide), housed in heavy, monumental frames, are a gestural portrayal of one human being carrying another on their back. These drawings were then assembled in their heavy frames on the ground floor level of the NAGB, with the heavy glass to protect them slotted in, and then these heavy drawings in their heavy frames were strapped and hoisted to have the 300lb+ weight lifted by the strong backs of several of the NAGB “ninjas”, (along with some very dear friends). In this way, the work is meta, though perhaps self-referential or self-reflexive better serves the description. It’s a sort of divine irony, that works depicting the act of labour of carrying another human being are enacted in the process of displaying the work itself. 

By Kevanté A. C. Cash, NAGB Correspondent. During conversations of sex and sexuality do we rarely address the elements of gender, gender identity and gender expression. However, what is gender? How is it different from sex? How is it expressed, and who gets to claim it? Over the last decade or more, millennial culture has started dialogues and much-needed debates over the complexities, toxicities and nuances of masculinity and femininity. Breaking down the stereotypes of such, debunking the myths and redefining it for themselves through the power of the “interweb”, social media, art and artistry. When singer, songwriter and recording artist Rashad Leamount-Davis joined forces with photographer Allan Jones for their project ‘MasC Off’ with the Ninth National Exhibition (NE9), their mission was simple: to address these complexities, toxicities and nuances that exist within the realm of masculinity, specifically for Black Bahamian men, some of whom may or may not identify as LGBTQ+ members of society.

By Natalie Willis. The 9th National Exhibition, “NE9: The Fruit and the Seed”, opened on December 13th, 2018, and the reception was quite honestly overwhelming in the abundance of bodies, spirits and minds present. As we approach this penultimate exhibition on the way to the 10th National Exhibition, this particular biennial’s harvest has been ripe with unabashed representations of self, social critique, and calls for action – all of which bear hopeful tidings for its next, landmark iteration of this key survey in checking the pulse of art in The Bahamas. Part garden, part spaceship, part act of love and care, Alex Timchula’s contribution to the NE9 is a living, growing representation of a utopian dream.

By Kevanté A. C. Cash. Melissa Alcena’s work is not for the faint of heart. It is not for those of whom dismiss the work of introspection. It causes a discomfort in self; challenges interior and personal spaces and the world around it, especially if that self exists as a Black body traversing through a “post-colonial” society.  As one of the 38 artists supported by the National Art Gallery of The Bahamas (NAGB) in the Ninth National Exhibition (NE9), “The Fruit and The Seed” Alcena’s work delivered nothing short of expectation. Her interpretation of the exhibition’s thematic manifested as works seeking to return the gaze and dispel the notion of “othering”, because truly, what is a “them”? What is a “they” if we are all experiencing the same aftermath outside of British colonial ruling? “Is the island not 21 x 7 miles even though the archipelago far flung? Why do we act as if we are so far apart?” With her biting and intimate suite of images, Alcena poses these questions.