From:TheBahamasWeekly.com
NAGB Opens NE6: Kingdom Come Exhibition
Nov 15, 2012 - 3:12:09 PM
The NAGB is pleased to announce the public opening of NE6: Kingdom Come on
Thursday, November 15th, 2012 at 7PM.
Curator’s Essay:
Belief systems tend to work best when they are isolated, uncontested by any
other canon; this could be why religious scholar and philosopher Joseph
Campbell, describes ‘The End’ as a kind of collision of once disparate
ideologies. This year’s edition of National Exhibition, “Kingdom Come,”
provides 50 visual thinkers with a practical platform on which to collide with
their vision of our present confusion or with hopeful projections of new
beginnings. The NE6 aims to explore the challenges of ‘transition’ in modern
times, in which we are brought abruptly closer together thanks to the spoils of
electronic and social media platforms that connect every aspect of our
existences.
With a click of the mouse, suddenly the other side of the world becomes the
other side of the street and our secure notions of what constitutes life are
challenged. We are bearing witness to the dynamics of an emerging global
culture filled with beauty and wonder but juxtaposed with anxiety and the
anticipation of a fast approaching, uncertain reality. The spiritual and
emotional self is affected by the external realities of social, political,
religious, and environmental upheaval. This calls to our attention the role we
play in what is to come and just how we got here.
The modern Bahamas certainly does not fall outside the realm of concerns
that this global conversation brings. The narratives of endings and beginnings,
life and death, positive and negative, are by no means new but, somehow in
their most basic forms, are still central to the core understanding of
ourselves and the greater story that we fit into. Here, 50 sophisticated minds
tell their stories, afforded the perfect opportunity to delve into a subject as
complex and relevant as the apocalypse, understood as the destruction of life
as we know it, a wiping clean of the slate, and the possibilities that may
bring.
The responses to the invited artists fell into essentially five categories:
IDENTITY
Knowing who we are makes us confident about who will become. The late
Jackson Burnside often made reference to the West African symbol of the Sankofa
bird, flying forward with its head looking back, illustrating knowledge of the
past. Do we, as Bahamians, understand truly who we are today? Are we prepared
to make peace with our past? Through large-format portrait photographs, Sabrina
Lightbourne explores Bahamian diversity in her submission Who is Bahamian, a
street work that brings into question our diversity and our own national
acceptance.
TRANSFORMATION
Time creates a field of movement, as well as being a measure against which
fixed ideas and philosophies can be assessed. In her floor-to-ceiling feather
installation, Dede Brown explores the recurrence of ‘dramatic realignments’ and
‘rebirths’ and questions the expectation of a ‘perfect equilibrium.’ Sue Katz
takes on a similar idea in her mixed media sculpture, depicting a modern angel,
interpreted through a personal evolution of events in her life that endow her
with her perspectives today.
SPIRITUALITY & BALANCE
Kendal Hanna and Toby Lunn both investigate the abyss of the universe through
an emotional expressive gesture that speaks into the immeasurability and
potentiality of the unknown. Tyrone Ferguson creates a physical metaphor with
sculpture leads to viewer along a tightrope that has not yet established its
destination.
JUSTICE
Apryl Burrows talks directly to the rights of women in Bahamian society. Her
works dramatically presents overcoming the oppression of gender restrictions
upheld by past laws. The heart of freedom can be found in the ferocity of the
individual; but this freedom is also fostered by the societal and legislative
constructions through which it functions.
SURVIVAL
John Beadle critiques the idea of territory, security, and ownership in his
work Solider Crab. This work analyses affects of involuntary and voluntary migration,
our sense of physical and mental space. The inevitability of change need not be
disorienting; the suggestion is that you carry your shelter with you and, with
that, you carry your history.
Swiss psychologist Carl Jung refers to the conversion of St. Paul as the
great nervous breakdown: a necessary transformative event that manifests in the
lives of those individuals who are brave enough to forge their own paths.
Perhaps, if society is heroic enough to follow, these paths could lead to a
collective infrastructure that might lead to new kingdom that is yet to come.
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