Climate crisis Archives - National Art Gallery of The Bahamas

Everybody and Dey Grammy

23 March 2020

Whether we were watching and waiting for the storm to hit directly, or watching and waiting for it to pass from the safety of our own sofas, Christina Wong’s “Everybody and Dey Grammy #hurricanedorian” (2019) struck a cord (and plucked on heartstrings) for all of us. From the hashtag to the sentiment of everybody collectively waiting with bated breath, we felt Hurricane Dorian as a nation — not in a nationalist sense, but rather as people living in, from and tied to this landscape, “born Bahamian” or otherwise.

So Close Yet So Far

23 March 2020

As life on islands finds a new normal, we see the importance of connectivity and awareness. Much has been revealed by Dorian’s passage, from the lack of bill payment by some agencies for private companies’ services to aid storm victims, to the need for closer links between people with communities. The beauty of art is that it can capture so many emotions and open up valuable conversations about how and where we live. Naomi Klein in her work The Battle for Paradise (2019), illustrates the gap between words used to rebuild in Puerto Rico in the wake of Maria and Irma and the reality of dispossession and displacement.

In the wake of storms: Moving forward as a nation displaced

2 October 2017

By Dr Ian Bethell-Bennett.Dominica, The British Virgin Islands, Barbuda, Puerto Rico, The Bahamas, in particular, Ragged Island and some other southern places, are beautiful and far-flung, exotic and form parts of people’s dreams of paradise. They are paradises on earth and they have been devastated. They have, like many parts of the Commonwealth world, experienced unprecedented natural disasters and suffering in the short space of a few weeks. They are stunning spaces of natural beauty and amazing depth of feeling and life.

If an entire population moves, is it still a nation?: The consequences of censoring self.

11 August 2017

By Dr Ian Bethell-Bennett. Sam Shepard has died. Sam Shepard has died and we are left to remember his works. It is a different dying than Derek Walcott because he is further away, perhaps, but he throws into sharp relief our refusal to see ourselves as we pass through our everyday lives. A country teetering on the verge of yet another downgrade, a society shrouded in debt but unwilling to spend less because tings coss more and VAT bite me in my…? Perhaps to see their lives, their futures.

Indigeneity and Art: Defining our values

31 October 2016

As the lushness of the island disappears in the wake of Hurricane Matthew, it is important to note the significance of imaging who we are and where we live. As Bahamians, we inhabit a geographic space that has beauty beyond words along with limitless possibility, and we must embrace our reality and step outside of the constructed, constricted reality being imposed on us.

The Eye of the Storm: Preservation and destruction

26 October 2016

Winslow Homer’s ‘Hurricane’ captures howling winds of the storm in The Bahamas, however, the image, though teaming with meaning and feeling, does not capture the magnitude of today’s super storms. These so-called superstorms bring with them devastation and trauma of epic proportions. The visual produced in Homer’s painting remains haunting and provides an interesting couple for the Gulfstream painting, and After the Hurricane, Bahamas as it shows a man shipwrecked on a desolate island.