William Van Meter (Artnet) writes about the artistic representation of the Bahamas at the Venice Biennale: “At the Bahamas Culinary and Arts Festival, the island’s creative scene came together—and announced its Venice Biennale artists, Lavar Munroe and the late John Beadle.” Here are excerpts; please read this exciting article in its entirety at Artnet.
Last week at the VIP opening dinner for the third annual Bahamas Culinary and Arts Festival, a flock of semi-domesticated pink flamingos ambled through the convention center ballroom [. . .]. Opening festivities were capped off by a thunderous, under-the-stars Lenny Kravitz concert.
The lively art fair component of the festival, known as Fuze, is as scrappy as it is charming and surreal. A 17-foot, arachnid-like sculpture by Bahamian legend Antonius Roberts—its spindly limbs carved from reclaimed Madeira wood and capped with human faces—presided over it all. During the artist talks, the live music from outside the tents threatened to drown out the speakers, and the conversation was punctuated by thunderous blows from the gale-force winds snapping the tent canvas.
It’s hosted by the Baha Mar, a mega resort that borders the ocean and encompasses three separate hotels, a lively casino, an art gallery, and a water park. [. . .]
“Our mother company [the Hong Kong-based Chow Tai Fook Enterprises] has a massive collection and sometimes sends pieces here and we curate around them,” said John Cox, the executive director of arts and culture at Bahama Mar and Fuze’s co-founder. A well-known figure in local arts circles, Cox was previously chief curator at the National Art Gallery of the Bahamas and founded the celebrated, now-shuttered, DIY art space Popopstudios. [. . .]
What made Fuze special this year wasn’t just the fact that it has grown to showcase over 120 artists and galleries representing 21 countries, It’s also where the artists that would be representing this 52-year-old island nation at next year’s Venice Biennale were announced (the Baha Mar is one of the lead sponsors of the pavilion). It’s the Bahamas’s first Venice Pavilion in more than a decade.
Cox is serving as its commissioner. Another driving force behind it is the executor, Amanda Coulson, founder of TERN, a contemporary art gallery in Nassau that regularly shows at the Armory Show and the 1-54 African art fair. She’s on a mission to show that Bahamian culture is far more than sun-kissed beaches and turquoise seas.
“We’re doing this privately—with full government sanction, of course, since we’re representing the nation,” she said. “It’s all self-funded. The government doesn’t always see how spending money on art abroad can help people at home. But we know what it means for the Bahamas to have this kind of cultural presence on the world stage. It shows that we have ideas, that we have excellence beyond the clichés of tourism. This is a chance to communicate who we really are.” [. . .]
Please read full article at https://news.artnet.com/art-world/bahamas-fair-venice-biennale-pavilion-2704959nl-pm05
[Photo above by Torrell Glinton.]