National Exhibition 11

NELEVEN: Into the Void asks artists to explore new ways of being through the lens of Caribbean Futurism. This kind of imagining is already embedded in Bahamian identity: For nearly 100 years after the Spanish arrived, having decimated the indigenous Lucayan population, the islands existed in a relative state of emptiness—a void awaiting new peoples, cultures, and histories to shape them. Most people living on these islands today descend from those who journeyed into this void, and, like many Caribbean nations, our culture developed through the intersections of the diverse peoples and cultures that settled here throughout our history.

The Void can be thought of as an expansive space that exists everywhere and nowhere at once, ripe with potential for opportunity and growth. In physics, the void is the space between filaments (structures like galaxies), a liminal space that connects everything. This idea of the void mirrors the Caribbean experience, where the liminality we inhabit as a people forces us to constantly define and redefine ourselves. Voids, then, are perfect spaces for the birth of new ideas, creations, and ways of life.