By Natalie Willis
This week we continue our interview with Sonia Farmer on her work for the upcoming collaborative exhibition with the British Council, “We Suffer To Remain”. It is difficult to think about just who gets to discuss our history, when some voices are silenced, and others get a proverbial loudspeaker. Farmer’s artist book “A True & Exact History”, a poem produced from her erasure of Richard Ligon’s “A True & Exact History of the Island of Barbadoes” (1657), deals with just that.
By Natalie Willis. In this week’s interview we hear from Sonia Farmer on her contribution to “We Suffer To Remain”, an exhibition opening later this month that moves around ideas of slavery, time and memory, and how we begin to unpack and deal with these legacies. Farmer is a writer, visual artist, and small press publisher who uses letterpress printing, bookbinding, hand-papermaking, and digital projects to build narratives about the Caribbean space. She is the founder of Poinciana Paper Press, a small and independent press in Nassau which produces handmade and limited edition chapbooks of Caribbean literature and promotes the crafts of book arts through workshops and creative collaborations. The title for the exhibition comes from Farmer’s book produced for this show, “A True & Exact History”, which will be displayed alongside fellow Bahamian artists John Beadle and Anina Major works, as well as the work of Scottish artist Graham Fagen with his project from the 2015 Venice Biennale, “The Slave’s Lament”. Farmer moves us through not just the language written within the book itself, but around the art of bookmaking itself and how she crafts language to unpack the question of who we–as a country and as part of the Caribbean region–allowing to voice our histories.
By Natalie Willis
Continuing on last week’s interview, the discussion builds on the rest of the body of work that Anina Major is producing for “We Suffer To Remain”, an exhibition featuring “The Slave’s Lament” (2015) by Scottish artist Graham Fagen alongside three Bahamian artists, Sonia Farmer and John Beadle included. Major’s work and much of the exhibition deals with the legacies of slavery as embodied by us as post-colonial subjects. This week she speaks to that embodiment, to pain, and to what it means to inhabit a Black feminine body in relation to the ideas brought up by this exhibition as well as recent events in the country.
By Natalie Willis. We often speak of Slavery in regards to one demographic in particular and the detrimental effects that remain today – and rightly so. It is a painful legacy, but it is also a shared one. “The Slave’s Lament,” written by Scottish poet and lyricist Robert Burns in 1792, is a song that spoke to this history in its own time. It is also the title of a work by another Scot, Graham Fagen, who used this song in his presentation at the 2015 Venice Biennale International Art Exhibition. This newer rendition, featuring Reggae artist Ghetto Priest and a string ensemble, serves as the focus and starting point for us to begin to discuss this history through a slightly different lens. The exhibition, “We Suffer To Remain,” opens in March and features Fagen’s artwork along with that of three Bahamian artists, namely: Sonia Farmer, John Beadle, and Anina Major
By Keisha Oliver. Last summer, I had the pleasure of turning my first bowl from Madeira wood with established woodturner and furniture-maker, Robin B. Hardy. With no formal training, he has developed a niche for one-of-a-kind pieces hand-crafted from a variety of wood grown in The Bahamas. Operating out of his basement workshop for the past seventeen years, Hardy’s design style is simple, functional and elegant, allowing the wood to express its own qualities and natural imperfections. His practice as a woodworker is inspired by curiosity and the challenge each piece of wood presents. He has coined his creative repertoire as “discovered art in salvaged wood.”
By Keisha Oliver. Five days a week, you’ll find Bahamian ceramicist Jessica Colebrooke in her Nassau studio, which is tucked away behind her home in the Gleniston Park community. 19 years ago, Colebrooke started out in a 10 x 10ft room with a sheet of plywood on two crates and a small kiln. Today she owns and manages “Jessica’s Tileworks Studio,” one of the leading ceramics and tile manufacturers in The Bahamas. As a mother, wife, educator, artist and entrepreneur, Colebrooke has committed her life and work to supporting and nurturing a culture of creativity.
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
