"Funky Nassau: Recovering an Identity" is being held at the highly recognised Nassauischer Kunstverein Gallery in Weisbaden, Germany and features the work of John Beadle, Dionne Benjamin Smith, Lillian Blades, John Cox, Blue Curry, Michael Edwards, Antonius Roberts, Heino Schmid and Clive Stuart.
"Our participation in this exhibit is due to an invitation by Amanda Coulson who is a freelance writer and curator. She visited the National Art Gallery and selected several of the art works for the exhibition. Coulson has Bahamian ties but lives and works in Germany," said John Cox.
The celebrations marking 200 years of the establishment of the Dukedom of Nassau in Weisbaden were seen as a remarkable opportunity by curator and art critic Amanda Coulson who decided to play upon the Nassau connection to put Bahamian art on the international stage. With the assistance of Erica James, Director of the National Art Gallery of the Bahamas, the best of a new generation of contemporary artists were selected to exhibit.
"To date, the show is the most conceptual art exhibition anywhere. There were only two art paintings. Most of the work were sculpture or installation," said Cox.
"The intent of this show is to encourage an appreciation of Bahamian Art that penetrates the surface and touches the soul," said Erica James. The work on display brings the viewer closer to understanding the complexity of the Bahamian experience while challenging the established stereotypes of Bahamian art.
John Beadle addresses the pressing issues immigrants face in the Bahamas. In his piece, "In Another Man's Yard" 250 machetes hang menacingly in the form of a thick trunked tree. Dionne Benjamin Smith's work, "Real Bahamian Art" takes clich�d images of sloops sailing and coconut tree-lined beaches and overlays them with text that asks why these images are accepted as the singular face of Bahamian art. Lillian Blades transformed the entry passageway to the gallery into a colourful womb of fabric and objects that end in the colours and sounds of a Junkanoo parade in "The Passage Project." John Cox's elaborate installation work envelopes the viewer in a room with video and sound elements along with a 100 foot swath of snaking plastic material emblazoned with the difficult question and title of the piece, "How Much do you Love Me?" Blue Curry filled part of the gallery space with almost a ton of sand from Yamacraw in his project, "Like Taking Sand to the Beach" which allows visitors to walk on the beach while looking out at the busy and cold German street below.
Michael Edwards crosses art with science in "Escaped Exotics" which cultivates invasive plant species in a hydroponic garden, recording the normally inaudible sounds of growth and amplifying them for gallery visitors to hear. Antonius Roberts used the front garden of the gallery to create a "Sacred Space" similar to the one created at Clifton Pier featuring his wooden sculptures, encircled by a specially made enclosure of German stone. Heino Schmid explored issues of nationality and identity (being both Bahamian and German) in "Malaise," a video piece which allows us to painfully witness him drinking Bahamian sea water and water from the river Rhine with all of their microscopic impurities. Clive Stuart addressed the war in the Middle East and the Bahamian attitude toward it in "Blood, Sweat & Tears Made in the USA," indicating that perhaps we are all implicated in the tragic and continuous loss of life in the conflict.
"It was a strong show and like anything else, when you get into a new arena, you still have to validate yourself because you're introducing yourself to a new audience. After all, there are not a whole lot of opportunities for this type of showing," said Cox.
On March 18th the Head of the Department of Culture of the City of Wiesbaden opened the show to a full house of specially invited guests, gallery members and several important European curators. Eight of the Bahamian artists involved made the trip to Germany and were there to discuss their work in person. Gallery viewers were overwhelmingly impressed and commented that they knew that the Bahamas had sand, sea and sun, but had no idea that it also has artistic talent to offer. The show has opened European eyes to a new side of the Bahamas and runs until April 28th.
By: Betty Vedrine – Lifestyles Reporter, The Nassau Guardian
