OPEN BORDERS

“OPEN BORDERS” is a group exhibition featuring works of Crucian artist LaVaughn Belle, Dominican-American artist Leonardo Benzant, Bahamian-American artists Deborah Cartwright and Tamika Galanis, Bermudian artist Gherdai Hassell, Caymanian artists John Reno Jackson and Simon Tatum, Jamaican artist Richard Nattoo and Haitian-American artist Demetrius Wilson. The show creates connections between the different works from all corners of our Caribbean region with various themes that appear across the works being spiritualism, healing and concern with the changing climate.

“OPEN BORDERS” celebrates both The Bahamas’ gateway to the region being the most northern island in the archipelago, and TERN Gallery as a space with a policy to forge connections and engender dialogues throughout the region, actively trying to burst through barriers put in place by colonizing powers to prohibit an exchange of goods and ideas.

Curated by Gallery Co-Director Amanda Coulson, she says:

“As many of the project-based artists we’ve worked with have either been non-Bahamian or Bahamian by connection, but not locally positioned, I started to think about how TERN is making a transnational space despite our proud Bahamian-ness. We are one of the few commercial galleries in Nassau really making a concerted effort to include non-Bahamian artists and invite folks from within the region and Caribbean diaspora, and I think this is worth accentuating.”

“OPEN BORDERS” highlights each artist’s unique approach to their practices that makes way to consider further themes of natural resource fragility, the necessity of regional healing for nations and citizens, and the ecological and sociological impacts of tourism on Caribbean peoples, further emphasizing the larger conversation of orange economy relevance. It also raises the question of connection and community in a geographical area which, unlike the European Union, does not encourage ease of travel between our nations and asks, “What would our region look like if we indeed had open borders and were able to collaborate more efficiently?”

TERN Gallery
Mahogany Hill, Western Road
Nassau, The Bahamas

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