High Ambition: A Buzzy Field of Contemporary Bahamian Artists Descends in Nassau
Undoubtedly blessed with the ultimate trifecta: warm sun, golden sand, and endless turquoise sea, the Bahamas is also known for its thriving arts and culture scene. The artist-run Current Gallery and Arts Center inside the luxury Baha Mar complex is tapped into the community; while the National Art Gallery of the Bahamas, set in the historic Villa Doyle, offers special exhibitions that have included John Cox, Brent Malone, and Amos Ferguson. But that’s not all: an established and emerging crop of female Bahamian artists are paying homage to their mostly African culture (combined with American and British influences) by exploring their roots and identity. We take a look below.
“My work celebrates the captivating complexity of what it means to be Caribbean and, most specifically, Bahamian,” says Cydne Jasim Coleby, a Nassau-based digital and mixed media collage artist. With a vibrant collection of work celebrating her ancestors' resilience, Jasim Coleby has drawn heavily on the matriarchs of her family. At a London show a few years back, the artist’s Queen Mudda series found the artist using her face to highlight her relationships with important women in her life. Long fascinated by textures and materials, Jasmin Coleby also employs batik wax fabric; a native Bahamian element known as “Androsia '' –produced on its namesake island where she has family roots. (IG @ Cydoodles)
Using color, pattern and fabric, Bahamian-born Gio Swaby (who currently resides in Toronto) draws on several mediums to explore what she calls her “love letters to Black women.” After making portraits of her friends and family for several years, Swaby shifted to a series of elaborate textile works, exhibited last summer at her solo show at Claire Oliver Gallery in Harlem. “My work operates in the context of understanding love as liberation - a healing and restorative force,” Swaby notes, adding her pieces celebrate personal style, vulnerability, strength, beauty, individuality and imperfections (perhaps she’s nodding to her freehand stitching process, where loose threads are visible to the onlooker’s naked eye. (IG: @gioswaby)
Growing up in New Providence, April Bey, who currently resides in Los Angeles, CA (and also teaches) takes an interdisciplinary approach to her work: an introspective and social critique of American and Bahamian culture, and a look at feminism and social media among other modern labels. Intimately schooled in painting, collage, video, and printmaking, Bey also creates two-dimensional mixed media works. For instance, her labor-intensive Atlantica series leans on a mix of familiar supplies: fur, glitter, vinyl, and woven textiles showing images of real-life community figures.
“It’s such an exciting time to be an artist in the Bahamas…we are essentially reclaiming and writing the narrative and definition of ‘Caribbean art’ or more specifically, ‘Bahamian art,'' says Wallace-Whitfield, who at the age of four started making art (and who would later pass on a medical program) to fully dedicated herself to her craft. Inspired by human interaction, Wallace-Whitfield’s work often makes references to human nature and instinct. The artist’s 2012 Animalistic series placed large animal heads atop of dainty, feminine bodies to showcase the connection of women’s strength to equipped animal-like instincts. (IG: :@blackcanvas)
Born in Nassau, June Collie, a multimedia artist creates what she calls “unapologetically sensual female figures” through the mediums of photography, painting, film (she’s already produced four shorts) and explores Black womanhood, ancestry and family themes. “What could it look like for black people to exist in pure joy?” Collie often asks. That’s not all: the artist also owns and operates Sixty2Sixty Art Gallery, located on Bay Street and serving as one of the few Black-owned female galleries; and known to host emerging contemporary artists and solo shows like Deimi Ubani’s “It’s Never One Thing” and Montez Kerr’s “Beauty & Art of Sloop Sailing.”@Sixty2SixtyArt Gallery
