The National Art Gallery of The Bahamas (NAGB) is pleased to announce tonight’s opening of its newest exhibition, “The Visual Life of Social Affliction” (VLOSA), a Small Axe Project, from 7pm to 10pm.

The provocative collection is a masterful display of works by Caribbean artists and writers. Contemporary visual artists, Blue Curry, John Beadle and Heino Schmid along with writers, Erica Moiah James and Christian Campbell, are notable Bahamians who contributed works to this cutting edge showcase.

The Small Axe Project is a collaborative endeavour designed to express the struggles of life in the Caribbean from the years of slavery and indenture to present times along with the push-back against suppressive regimes.

“We are pleased to present this exhibition at The National Art Gallery of The Bahamas and are excited to show newly commissioned works from ten global Caribbean artists who were paired with contemporary writers to tell the stories behind their vision. Challenging subjects like human trafficking and the despair of life in the ghetto are presented in a visually stunning exhibition that covers so many forms of affliction in the region.”

“The National Art Gallery of The Bahamas is a world-class museum that is committed to sharing compelling visual art with the general public. “The Visual Life of Social Affliction” exhibition delivers on our mandate to educate, uplift and inspire,” Amanda Coulson, Executive Director, said. “As the leading art institution in The Bahamas, we will continue to actively nurture and provoke a healthy cultural ecosystem by exhibiting beautiful, yet challenging works of art created by Bahamians and artists from the Caribbean region.”

The event is free and open to the public and will feature entertainment and light refreshments.

CLICK HERE for event’s Facebook page.

COVER STORY:

Epistemic and Cultural Violence

Powercutting as Light

by Dr Ian Bethell-Bennett, The University of The Bahamas

“It is time, finally, to cease being what we are not.” (Quijano)

Anibal Quijano (31 May, 2019) and Toni Morrison (5 August, 2019), two great thinkers have gone.

Nicolette Bethel’s 1990 play, Powercut, produced and performed at the Dundas Centre for the Performing Arts, shows what happens in the dark. Nowadays, lights drop into darkness at least once a day for hours at a time. The violence of structures invisible to the naked colonised eye is only ever gossiped about. We are afraid to cease being what we are not, we do not know how to be who we are. It is the culture of violence and silence revealed through ‘discussions’ around tourism and prostitution, two interlocked economies of pleasure. The Victorian Bahamas avoids discussing these things in the same breath, yet the exoticisation and tropicalisation of space and place speaks to a reality of total erasure of self for what we are not, to pick up on Quijano’s statement.

Local artist pays tribute to Stan Burnside

A local artist and illustrator has paid the ultimate tribute to one of his heroes, Stan Burnside. The iconic political cartoonist recently retired from The Nassau Guardian after 40 years in the business.

Burnside, whose popular Sideburns cartoon perfectly captured the zeitgeist of The Bahamas, was an inspiration to many Bahamians, one of whom was Rashad Cash, the owner of Think Light Studios.

In fact, Cash says he credits Burnside for getting him to read the newspaper.

“I was not a big reader and rarely picked up the newspaper, but the first time I saw Sideburns I laughed so hard and I loved the way that it was drawn. It looked so authentic. It looked like us. I loved how the characters looked like people I knew and I especially appreciated that they talked like us with the same vernacular,” said Cash.

“Honestly, after that, I was hooked. I would buy the paper just to see the cartoon and somehow along the way, I just started reading the entire newspaper. But, that would not have happened had it not been for that cartoon. So, I thank Mr. Burnside for that.” [...]

CLICK HERE for full story at BahamasLocal.com.

Bahamian artist to be featured in New Orleans exhibition

The New Orleans African American Museum (NOLA) is proud to announce its upcoming exhibition entitled “Welcome To The Afrofuture : Ground Zero”. Contemporary Bahamian artist April Bey has been selected to show her critical mixed media work that speaks to contemporary black female rhetoric.

The exhibition will showcase contemporary work by artists, creatives, and designers engaging in the aesthetic of black spatial realities, imaginary spaces and black meccas. Show opens September 12th.

April Bey grew up in Nassau and now resides and works in Los Angeles, CA as a contemporary visual artist and art educator. Bey’s interdisciplinary artwork is an introspective and social critique of American and Bahamian culture, contemporary pop culture feminism, generational theory, social media, AfroFuturism and constructs of race.

She received her BFA in drawing in 2009 from Ball State University and her MFA in painting in 2014 at California State University, Northridge in Los Angeles. Bey is in the permanent collection of The California African American Museum, The National Art Gallery of The Bahamas and The Current, Baha Mar in Nassau, Bahamas. Bey has exhibited internationally in biennials NE7, NE8 and NE9 in The Bahamas. Bey has also exhibited internationally in Italy, Spain and Accra Ghana, West Africa.

CLICK HERE for April’s website.

Cacique Artist in the Spotlight:

Bahamian Artist
John Cox

by Cacique International

Cacique International’s “Artist in the Spotlight” series is a journey into a thriving Bahamian art scene and a look at some of The Bahamas’ most exciting artists, pushing boundaries on island and around the world.

In this episode, they are chatting with one of The Bahamas’ most defining artists of the modern era – John Cox – an avant-garde artistic explorer whose body of work is as impressive and complex as the tattooed canvas of his skin.

For this interview, Cacique was privileged to visit John in his home studio. In supreme contrast to the uber-hip space that he commands as Art Director of Baha Mar’s The Current (an experiential hub for Bahamian art), Cox’s home studio is somewhat humbling. A cross between the mad scientist’s basement and the rock band’s garage, this is John’s self-confessed “broke down ol’ car” that still takes him on surprisingly long journeys. Time to jump in the backseat and go for a ride. “But watch out,” said John Cox. “There’s no suspension.”

• • •

CACIQUE: WHAT INSPIRES YOU? WHAT INSPIRES PARTICULAR PIECES?
John: I am moved by my surroundings. I will make moves to give a voice to something I want to have heard or experienced. For example, my Kimono/Geisha series is built on a cultural and historical comparison with traditional Japanese geisha customs and our local hospitality industry. The early geishas concerned themselves greatly with service and saw this as the utmost form of creative expression. A pure concept, one that we all set out to recreate for our own hospitality industries. Both, when executed in the purest contexts and untainted by greed, exploitation or distortion possess any dynamic sensory or emotional experience. Likewise, when either loose balance, expectations don’t align with intentions and tensions result. My series tries to harness aspects of both of these conditions.

A portal into the practice of a dedicated educator.

by Natalie Willis

The 19th Century marked a period in Britain known as Orchidelirium. Not entirely unlike the Dutch tulip fever, this flower-frenzy was a mad scramble for the exotic, elusive orchid. They became connotative as a symbol of wealth, prestige and knowledge, of the affluence required to secure these items from far-off lands. Sue Bennett Williams’ “Poor Man’s Orchid” (1989) is no such thing and no less beautiful.

Sue Bennett-Williams, an American transplant who has made The Bahamas her home for quite some time now, is a formidable educator and creative who has rooted herself firmly in the foundations of Bahamian art. From teaching generations of tender young creatives from primary school to her time at the University of The Bahamas as a lecturer in the Fine Art department, her care and notorious ability to not-mince-words is the stuff of legends, and of rather amusing tales from the equally tender egos of freshman Fine Arts degree students. [...]

CLICK HERE for full text at the NAGB.

The work of Alton Lowe, a realist painter born in Green Turtle Cay, Abaco, has an easy appeal for many Bahamians. From landscapes and flora, architecture, to imaginings of Lucayans and Loyalists, his practice gives a sense of joy in his skill of rendering as much as his interest in history – and as a post-World War II baby, it makes sense, given the global conversations around how these events should never be repeated. His interests in preserving the past, that go far beyond his painting interpretations, inspired his founding of the Albert Lowe Museum in Green Turtle Cay, sharing the history and culture of the community he grew up in. He is also responsible for this Nassau-based blast-from-the-past with “The Deanery” painted in 1979.

Part of the new Permanent Exhibition, “TimeLines: 1950-2007” curated by NAGB Assistant Curator Richardo Barrett, “The Deanery” (1979) gives us a good opportunity to speak about just that – some of the threads and weavings and timelines that lead to the production of this work. [...]

CLICK HERE for full text at the NAGB.

Templeton Religion Trust: Call For Art Proposals

Application Deadline: 28 October 2019

Art Seeking Understanding (ASU) is a program strategy concerned with improving the methods of inquiry into the existence and nature of what Sir John Templeton called spiritual realities. ASU begins with aesthetic cognitivism, a theory about the value of the arts that approaches them not simply (or not even) as sources of delight, amusement, pleasure, or emotional catharsis but, instead, as sources of understanding.

But is there an empirically demonstrable connection between art and understanding vis à vis what Sir John referred to as spiritual reality and/or spiritual information in particular?

And if so, what distinctive cognitive value does engagement with the arts (production and/or consumption) generate?

Under what conditions and in what ways does participation in artistic activities encourage or stimulate spiritual understanding, insight, or growth (meaning- or sense-making)?

Projects in this area would bring together writers, poets, painters, sculptors, musicians, dancers, filmmakers – artists of all kinds – as well as art historians and musicologists with philosophers, theologians, and scientists from a variety of sub-disciplines within the psychological, cognitive, and social sciences to conceive and design empirical and statistical studies of the cognitive significance of the arts with respect to spiritual realities and the discovery of new spiritual information.

CLICK HERE for PDF with full details.
CLICK HERE to view video that accompanies Call.