55. Biennale – Padiglione Bahamas

Tavares Strachan rappresenta le Bahamas alla Biennale di Venezia col progetto Polar Eclips.

Comunicato stampa

The Bahamas will presents, with its inaugural pavilion, a multi-sensory installation by Tavares Strachan that investigates themes of heroic exploration, cultural displacement, oral history and the shifting of cultural narratives over time. The immersive environment of the pavilion will exist in two dimensions: as a single, comprehensive installation and as a collection of individual artworks. Key works will include a 14-­channel video installation accompanied by surround sound, and a selection of neon-­light works.
Strachan specifically explores often-invisible shifts in cultures, physical environments, and recounted histories over both space and time, in the wake of globalization and narratives of progress. Three geographically and culturally disparate sites — the Venice Arsenale, downtown Nassau, and the North Pole — will momentarily coexist in the Bahamian pavilion.The main exhibition space will feature an immersive installation, in which the viewer is surrounded by documentation of a reenactment of a historic narrative: the 1909 polar expedition of Robert Peary and Matthew Alexander Henson. Also included in the show are neon-­light sculptures that further address the theme of belonging through a more conceptual approach. The works speak to the idea of displacement more directly, immediately confronting the viewer with the problematics of belonging and place. «I'm fascinated by the idea of being in two or more places at once, and exploring difference that way», says Strachan. «The way that the Venice Biennale, historically and now, deploys the idea of difference as cultural tourism is an interesting problem to work with».