Reinforcing connection

NAGB chief curator looks for potential links for regional artists abroad!!

Chief Curator of the National Art Gallery of The Bahamas (NAGB) Holly Bynoe has been seeking new opportunities for local and regional artists abroad. Invited to take part in Caribbean Focus, the British Council’s international curatorial research trip, Bynoe traveled to Scotland, last month with a cohort of eight other curators and cultural workers from the Caribbean, South and North America and India for 10 days of researching and networking.

NAGB Chief Curator Holly Bynoe presents an overview of her work at the British Council International Curatorial Research Trip. 

The connection with the British Council was made at a Tilting Axis conference held in February of this year at Fresh Milk Art Platform in Barbados. Bynoe is a co-founder of Tilting Axis, an ongoing series of conferences and discussions dedicated to developing infrastructure between independent art organizations across the Caribbean, U.S., E.U. and Asia. In hopes of engaging with the Caribbean cultural industry, British Council representatives attended the conference and returned to report to Juliet Dean, visual arts advisor at the British Council.

While the spring and summer months were filled with travels and changes, particularly as Bynoe joined the NAGB as chief curator, the British Council was set on returning the hospitality. In late September, Bynoe was invited to travel to Glasgow to share her work and mission with others from across the region and Atlantic.

“I think it’s good to figure out how the British Council wants to participate in the Caribbean cultural sphere,” said Bynoe. “When you are a post-independence Anglophone territory, it comes with a deep suspicion. But it seems as though they want to facilitate a connection between the UK, and the Caribbean. A stream to support exchanges, collaborations, mentorship programs and direct linkages with institutions within the Caribbean is what they want to achieve and build on.”

Sponsored entirely by the British Council, the trip was an exploratory one, and Bynoe hoped to see how the council’s interests would align with her own as curator of the NAGB. The group’s primary objective was finding out more about contemporary art practices and the creative sector in the UK, and in return, the curators presented individual overviews of their work.

Bynoe hopes more of Graham Fagen’s works like this, “The Slave’s Lament”, will travel throughout the Caribbean. 

Bynoe is well connected throughout the region. In addition to being the NAGB’s chief curator, she is editor-in-chief and founder of ARC Magazine, meaning that she has dedicated herself to travelling the region, fostering relationships with artists, curators and art institutions. This has been done in an effort to promote artists from the Caribbean and contemporary art movements in the region on a larger platform. Still, Bynoe knew no one other than artist and Alice Yard administrator Christopher Cozier, whom she met when he curated an exhibition showing some of her works. The trip offered her the chance to build new relationships from others with similar backgrounds. And with much of the work in the Caribbean focusing on a shared history of colonization and the tensions that come with it, a partnership with the British Council could be eye-opening for many on both sides of the pond.

“I just want to be able to show up and confirm commitment, because the British Council has a vast wealth of infrastructural knowledge and connections, which could be used in very specific ways to support either The Bahamas and the wider Caribbean. So that’s my interest – figuring out where I can intersect and develop collaborations,” Bynoe explained.

Graham Fagen is one example of the ways individual artists can benefit from the exchange. Fagen has already made a name for himself internationally, having represented Scotland at the Venice Biennale this year. His work now reflects his studies in the history of slavery and cultural trauma for those on both sides of the Pond. Fagen has been deconstructing the ways we contemplate and represent slavery and it is anticipated that his pieces will travel throughout the Caribbean region.

The Seventh National Exhibition, which opened last December at the National Art Gallery of The Bahamas, was curated by Holly Bynoe and Michael Edwards. 

According to Bynoe, the British Council’s interest in the visual art arena in the Caribbean should be viewed as something that local and regional artists should tap into.

“The British Council showing an interest in the visual art industry in the Caribbean is a profitable moment for artists, as we will benefit from the council’s infrastructural support,” she said. “In a way, they are looking at a more holistic way to define their support… all granting organizations have their own inherent agendas, so defining our independence and agency within this is going to be crucial and challenging.”

For more information on the NAGB and the ways it is forging connections with international creative spaces, visit its website, www.nagb.org.bs, or Facebook page, or call 328-5800.

The December Artwork of the Month is ‘Balinese Woman With Flamingoes’

By Natalie Willis

For many at the National Art Gallery of The Bahamas (NAGB), Brent Malone’s “Balinese Woman with Flamingoes” is a favorite from the National Collection. An original Malone, the painting is considered one of the gems that has been graciously gifted to the gallery over the years (in this case, by the kindness of Jean Cookson). Painted in the last decade of his life, “Balinese Woman with Flamingoes” resulted from the intersection of several events and factors in Malone’s life at the time.

The 90s was an important decade for Malone, as his work was being recognized on both national and international levels. He was honored at the College of The Bahamas and at a solo show at the Central Bank of the Bahamas. Perhaps, most importantly to Malone himself, he received the honor of becoming a Member of the British Empire and met Queen Elizabeth II herself.

Having just secured the UBS mural commission, he took his daughter, Marysa, on a three-month trip to Indonesia – visitors at the gallery can find evidence of this in the pensive portrait of the Balinese woman, which at first glance seems so reminiscent of Gauguin’s paintings of Tahitian women and girls. There is, however, a fundamental difference between the two artists (time-periods aside) that lies in the gaze through which they painted and observed their subjects. Both viewed their subjects with what could be a near-unavoidable male gaze, but where Gauguin sexualized his subjects and transformed them to exotic beings, Malone’s painting gives off the impression that he immersed himself in the culture and used his painting as a way to understand another society. In “Balinese Woman With Flamingoes”, his subject is sensory and sensual, rather than sexualized.

One theory is that this approach stems from his experience as “the Other”, being white in a predominantly black country. A feeling of marginalization is common among minority groups in all countries, and The Bahamas is no exception. It may be because of this that he approached his subjects with a sensitivity to their humanity.

The brushstrokes are full of the looseness, movement and vibrancy associated with Malone’s work, but the woman appears purposefully still; Malone thereby makes her the focus of the work amidst a pink and crimson cacophony of tropical birds. Though Balinese, the woman somehow seems familiar. Her features are reminiscent of those found in mixed-race Bahamians and indigenous peoples. Her eyes are trained forward, focusing on something in the distance, which brings to mind the motto of The Bahamas: ‘Forward, upward, onward, together’; another national symbol is clearly the bizarrely beautiful flamingo. In some ways, it could be said that Malone was inserting his own Bahamian cultural sensitivities and understandings into the painting.

Malone appears to integrate himself into the environment of the Balinese woman, just as he integrated himself so firmly into Bahamian culture after returning home from university, and carved a path for Bahamians of European descent to claim Bahamianness. Many believe that Malone’s work has such wide appeal because it deals with the fundamentals of soul, getting to the heart of Bahamianness.