Our culture, as long as we wish it to be, is alive in those feet that pound the streets because they do not have cars, in the rubber that heads north every morning and south every night to earn money to survive. The fear of suffering is as strong as the possibility of death by silence, though silence kills like cancer that eats away at our fibre and when we are asked, who do we think we are? What dare we answer?
Representation in art tends to be the ability of art to reflect on to capture the trueness of life. It is not a sketch of naturalistic or impressionistic images, but a ‘true’ to life picture of what we see. However, what we see can always be influenced, changed or distorted by our position, our vantage point, and bias or where we stand. We can look out at sea and see a glare of whiteness as the sun reflects off the water’s surface.
The recent honour given to National Art Gallery of The Bahamas (NAGB) staff in recognition of efforts and achievements, provide a moment of deeper thought on what this success means on a larger scale. Division is, in many ways, the trend for 2016 – the year that has B.I.G. level notoriety for just about everything going wrong.
Noted local photographer Antoine Ferrier sadly passed away on Sunday, November 6th after a short illness. He died at the Princess Margaret Hospital, on his birthday, at the age of 75. Charles Antoine Ferrier was born in Gonaives on November 6, 1941 in The Republic of Haiti. During the course of his formative years and early adulthood, he pursued and completed his formal education in Port-au-Prince.
Jacqueline Bishop for The Huffington Post shares: “For art historian Krista Thompson, a region like the Caribbean could do with more people studying art history since there is a booming artistic community and not enough curators and writers to document the work now being produced. “I’d wager that in the future it is the people working in more and more niche communities, some of which have formed in the Caribbean, who will have more opportunities available to them in the field of art history.”
We are so thrilled to be hosting Chantal Bethel’s ‘Holey Space’ in the project space room at the NAGB. We are also happy to announce that the proceeds from the sale of Bethel’s catalog will go towards Hurricane relief efforts for Grand Bahama.
The Museums Association of the Caribbean convenes in the Cayman Islands. Sunken ships, fossilised bones, film screenings, and apps for paintings: what is the common denominator? Museums. Preservation and interpretation of our cultural artefacts offer keys to understanding ourselves as Caribbean subjects, and The Museum Association of The Caribbean (MAC) is an indicator in encouraging these conversations and practices.
As Bahamians, our culture – like many others – is tied to the tongue. We love and loathe the oral traditions here, the fact that storytelling is what keeps much of our culture going but is also, sadly, how we lose much of the rich detail of the weaving of our history along the way.
The National Art Gallery of The Bahamas is locally known as the NAGB; however, many people make the mistake—in speech and print—of calling us the “Nassau” Art Gallery. Perhaps this slip is well-deserved: with attention focused on the preservation and management of the historic building that houses the NAGB (Villa Doyle); the National Collection itself of over 350 art pieces, needing continual care and maintenance; and the busy rotation of exhibitions (up to 14 in a single year, not including talks, events, book launches, film screenings, and other programming), there is plenty to keep us busy.
A Sustainable Future for Exuma presents several volumes in our reading nook including: The World Without Us – Alan Weisman; Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World (Posthumanities) – Timothy Morton; The Ethics of Earth Art – Amanda Boetzkes; The End of Nature – Bill McKibben; Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things (A John Hope Franklin Centre Book) – Jane Bennett; The Secret Life of Dust: From the Cosmos to the Kitchen Counter, the Big Consequences of Little Things – Hannah Holmes and The Last Pictures – Trevor Paglen among others.