“No Abstract Art Here”: The Problem of the Visual in Contemporary Anglo-Caribbean Art. Krista A. Thompson
The biennial national exhibition at the National Art Gallery of The Bahamas July 2006 sparked controversy after the jury did not accept some of the artists work.The artist thought that the jury had unfairly robbed them of the opportunity to exhibit and together they besieged the gallery’s staff with protests, threats of boycutt and appeals. Respectable citizens had complaints about the work, saying that installations were not ‘Art’. It was thought that the visual grammar of conceptual and abstract art could not translate the experience of the Caribbean; that representational art showed clearly using photo-realistic images and presented the islands as orderly and dreamlike tropical locales. Residents even view these pictures as more authentic that the islands themselves even if they have been modified to be picture perfect by removing anything unpleasing. Anyone who did not represent the island in this way were cast as visual heretics and were accused by a powerful segment of the cart community and was said to not be creating art.
Artist defiantly go against picturesque aesthetics by bringing to light ugly and bad aspects of the Bahamian society in their subject matter and use methods that disrupt earlier ways of visually imagining the islands. This picture perfect idea go as far back as colonial times when the British government hired photographers to create picturesque photographs of the islands when tourism trade first started. The photos were then hand painted to remove unwanted elements.
Sensitive invisible issues such as the Haitian population and their contribution to The Bahamas were highlighted by the artists via conceptual and abstract work. These new pieces cast new light on aspects of society that have been historically eluded by representational art in The Bahamas. They offered honest snapshots of life outside of the picturesque frame.
