Contemporary Caribbean Art

At the September 2024 iteration of The Armory Show Art Fair, Bahamas-born, U.S.-based visual artist Anina Major won the Pommery Award for excellence in contemporary art.  Though The Bahamas is well known for its plethora of insurance companies and exotic James Bond film locations, it also boasts a small but vital arts scene in the greater Caribbean diaspora.  These contributions to the contemporary art scene are due in no small part to the efforts of one of the islands’ longtime champions Amanda Coulson, founder of TERN, a Nassau-based contemporary art gallery, and former director of the National Gallery of Art in Nassau, The Bahamas.

Here Amanda Coulson discusses contemporary Caribbean art with our own Katja Zigerlig, Berkley One’s VP of Art, Wine and Collectibles Advisory, as well as trends in the marketplace.

Katja: Anina Major’s woven ceramic pottery was featured in a curated exhibit at the Armory Fair – and you represent her through your gallery TERN. Her “woven” ceramics won the Pommery Award— congratulations to you both! It’s the first time a Bahamian-born artist has won an award at this prestigious art fair. How did you become aware of Major’s work and decide to represent her?

Amanda: In 2011, I came home to The Bahamas to be the Executive Director of the museum, the National Art Gallery of the Bahamas (or NAGB) which I led from 2011-2021. In the same year, Major put a piece in the 28th Central Bank Annual Open Category art competition,

which was the leading space supporting young, up-and-coming artists, so I always attended. Being at the NAGB then gave me to the opportunity to get a broad vista on the Bahamian art scene and keep tabs on Bahamians who were studying in the field—whether that be art history, curatorial studies or studio practice—and see how they were developing.

Image courtesy of Amanda Coulson of TERN Gallery

Anina went from strength to strength, and we included her work in many shows during my tenure at the NAGB. In 2017, she graduated with her MA from the Rhode Island School of Design and in 2020 we opened TERN with the exhibition “Inherited Values” which was a two-person show with Anina and artist Kendra Frorup, curated by Jodi Minnis.

When I sat down with my partners in the gallery—Jodi and Lauren Holowesko—we made a list of artists we wanted to work with, many of whomwere people who we’d developed these long-term relationships already, so it wasn’t really a “new relationship” to move into the commercial gallery space together. It’s been a joy to be partner and supporter of Anina along her path and we mean to keep at it!

Katja: You’ve been a champion of Bahamian artists for a long time, and also played a role in getting early visibility for Ebony Patterson, who lives and works in Chicago and Kingston, Jamaica. She is now represented by Monica Meloche in Chicago and Hales in London, and the New York Botanical Garden also commissioned Patterson for a site-specific installation in 2023. She was another artist who helped elevate to larger awareness of the region– can you speak about that?

Amanda: When I became director of the NAGB, I made a huge effort to reach out to all the magazines where I’d worked as a writer formerly to try to get coverage and articles.

One of the most important for us was when then-editor of Frieze Magazine, Dan Fox, came down to Nassau for a research visit and put Jamaican artist Ebony Patterson on the cover of the April 2014 issue.

Its magazine included the section “Island Life,” in which he invited six artists, curators and writers from the region to give their opinion on how identity, infrastructure and education shape art in the Caribbean today. With over 1,000 islands, each hosting a different range of languages, the region represents a uniquely rich and complex set of cultures and histories. That issue really put The Bahamas on the art map, at least initially for curators.

Katja: Indeed, and that was in the pre-social media era, when one waited eagerly for your monthly art magazines to find out what was going on in the larger global creative community. Now you have an art gallery, social media accounts, and travel to international art fairs. There are so many more platforms in which to interact with collectors, arts enthusiasts and the public in addition to arts professionals. What has been the feedback?

Amanda: Generally, the reaction has been, “Wow, who knew?”

Image courtesy of Amanda Coulson of TERN Gallery

It does tend to surprise people that there is a serious art production—and more than what we call “coconut art” (paintings with a lot of palm trees)—but work that is thoughtful, conceptual, grappling with social issues, etc., coming out of the islands in the Caribbean.

The image of the Caribbean is one seen through the lens of a visitor – sitting on the beach, sipping a cocktail in a hammock, living in “paradise,” so it surprises some that we have achieved excellence in fields other than tourism.

Luckily, today there are more visibility platforms for culture beyond our borders.  This year’s Venice Biennale’s main show was “Foreigners Everywhere,” where a lot of the artists being exhibited are considered masters in their home countries but are unknown and therefore overlooked in the West/Global North. Part of TERN’s mission is to show precisely that we are contemporary, we are creative, and we can achieve excellence, and I think it’s working!

Katja: Like all super-heroes, and successful creatives, you have an interesting origin story. You were born in The Bahamas, studied abroad, helped found – then direct – the Volta Fair, then returned to become Director of the National Art Gallery of The Bahamas.  Can you describe your professional trajectory in the arts and how it led you to ultimately open a gallery and bring Bahamian and Caribbean artists to a wider audience?

Amanda: Being from the Caribbean I knew first-hand how incredibly difficult it could be to pursue an education and then make a career. Many who do, leave home from a relatively early age as resources at home are limited. Some Bahamians in the past who have succeeded on the global stage include Janine Antoni, Tavares Strachan, Lavar Munroe and Gio Swaby. They all had to leave home to achieve success.

Having worked in both the commercial and academic sides of the art world, I had acquired a lot of knowledge. I understood the market, the need to increase knowledge in the world about the Caribbean as well as how to manage operations (air conditioning, transport and storage!) and direct a large team. All of this came into play to help my direction of the NAGB, which was two pronged: to educate both at home and abroad.  At the museum, there was the opportunity to educate visiting audiences, the government ministry under whose portfolio the museum belonged, and the museum professionals themselves. I could also call on my international network of collaborators who would help in promoting and disseminating Bahamian art history and artists.

Katja: How did your tenure as a museum director influence your next adventure as a gallery founder?

Amanda: At the museum it just became very evident that our artists needed spaces to grow and evolve. When the museum first opened, there were very few galleries locally, so there was a dearth of places where artists could experiment and learn the process of exhibition-making. It was hard to tell artists that they would have a museum show when they’ve had a career, if there was nowhere for them to actually have that career and evolve over time.  So, TERN was formed with that in mind and, despite it being a commercial space, I always saw it as a continued act of nation-building because without an arts ecosystem it’s very difficult for development. We’re also extremely proud that several artists in our roster have now been able to quit their day job and have a career, while still living and working in Nassau.

The public and educational component of museum work has influenced our thinking as gallerists; we do not want the space to only be about selling and servicing a wealthy clientele. We also want to cultivate a new collector base from young Bahamian professionals and have talks, readings, and other ways of coming together to learn and create broader access to the arts.

Katja:  We know art from the Caribbean diaspora has been increasingly visible over the past few years. Is there a critical before/after moment that gave rise to the contemporary art scene?

Amanda: There are critical moments in our histories that gave rise to our own contemporary art scenes, so for us in The Bahamas I’d say artist-led groups such as Opus-5 and B.-C.A.U.S.E. from the 1980s, Jammin’ (80s-90s) and Popop Studios (2000) were key moments and events. It took a bit longer for the rest of the world to take notice.

In that respect, there have been some really seminal exhibitions which all brought work from the region into the spotlight through broad, collective shows with varying degrees of success:

• Infinite Island: Contemporary Caribbean Art, 2007, Brooklyn Museum, New York
• Wrestling with the Image: Caribbean Interventions,

2011, Art Museum of the Americas, Washington, DC

• Caribbean Crossroads of the World, 2012, The Studio Museum, Museo del Barrio The Queens Museum, New York
• Relational Undercurrents, 2015, Museum of Latin American Art (MOLAA), Long Beach, CA

I think museum shows such as these really broadened awareness of the breadth and depth of Caribbean art and allowed global audience to start taking us a little more seriously.

Hopefully, the next step would be for people to come down with a cultural agenda in mind and, between the beach or golf, make a point to visit museums or commercial galleries. Or visit a regional art fair, such as MECA in the Dominican Republic or FUZE in Nassau and meet the artists where they are born and inspired.

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Katja Zigerlig is Vice President of Art, Wine + Collectibles Advisory at Berkley One (a Berkley Company).