Images can create wealth, or they can be used to create ideas of paradise that serve only to silence those who occupy the place of paradise. Can we begin to use new art or contextualized images to tell a story that sells a place to the world that builds local and resident brands instead of disempowering them?
Itchy white lace, decorative candles, pristine stockings, crisp gloves and fine gold chains. These three little brides – being married to the good Christian church they inherited as newfangledBahamian post-colonial subjects, are a vision of all that is respectable and good and expected of a Bahamian of this time.
Haitian-born, Bahamian artist Jeffrey Meris opened his project ‘Asue: 20/20’ in the Project Space Room of the NAGB on Saturday, January 21, and it drew a sizeable crowd who came out to see how the word “Grace” would be interpreted. Dr. Ian Bethell-Bennett writes about Meris’ work and the importance of holding on to traditions and moments that make Afro-Caribbean culture possible.
There is a very specific kind of uneasiness in black Bahamians as we try to translate our blackness when we move into other spaces, and it is most felt and visceral when we emigrate. For the eighth National Exhibition (NE8), Giovanna Swaby addresses this discomfort directly in “I Learned In Passing” (2016). Through this displaced domestic setting, Swaby builds up a narrative that so many of us can identify with as black Bahamian women travelling abroad.
The National Art Gallery of The Bahamas(NAGB) has created a space we call the National Exhibition, now on its eighth run. The NE8 offers local artists and artists of the diaspora a space to express their ideas and thoughts, concepts and theories. This week Dr. Ian Bethell-Bennett writes about the documentary photographic work of Tamika Galanis currently based in North Carolina and her investigation into the Over-the-Hill communities of Grants Town and Bain Town.
Director of the NAGB, Amanda Coulson, writes about her recent experience being an invited juror to the Jamaica Biennial which will open in February 2017 at the National Gallery of Jamaica (NGJ). By building regional ally-ship and bridging the regional gap with art projects, this collaborative exchange between both institutions signals new growth and circulation in the industry.
Caribbean Studies Association (CSA) and the National Art Gallery of the Bahamas (NAGB) are pleased to announce an exclusive partnership to coincide with CSA’s 42nd annual conference whose theme has been identified as —Knowledge and Culture Economies: The Future of Caribbean Development? — convening at the Melía Nassau Beach Hotel, June 5-9, 2017.
Preparations for the Jamaica Biennial 2017 are moving into high gear next week with the selection of the juried section of the exhibition, which will take place on Monday, January 9 and Tuesday, January 10, 2017. The juried section of the Biennial is open to artists resident in Jamaica and artists living elsewhere but who were born in Jamaica or are of Jamaican parentage. For the juried section of the Jamaica Biennial 2017, the National Gallery has received 176 qualifying entries by 110 artists.
‘Clay Oven’ (1912) is earthy, it is full of sepias and greens and stony grays, and, it is homely and sincere. This watercolour by ex-patriot Elmer Joseph Read, more commonly known as E. J. Read, is of our oldest works in the National Collection, outside of the traditional black and white film photography by Jacob Coonley, on display in the first wing of the current Permanent Exhibition ‘From Columbus to Junkanoo’ curated by Averia Wright and Jodi Minnis.
The recently opened 8th National Exhibition (NE8) contains much of the Bahamian art we’ve come to know and love over the years. We are a nation and a region with a very strong tradition of painting and wall-based work, which has expanded into the 3D realm, which we have also grown increasingly comfortable with accepting into our arsenal of Bahamian creative practice. But we also have grown into more expanded fields of engagement and display.