Whether Tavares Strachan (born 1979 in Nassau, The Bahamas) undertakes expeditions to the Arctic, sending back a block of ice weighing 4.5 tons to his place of birth on the Bahamas, completes training as a cosmonaut, sends a golden canopic jar with the portrait of the first Black astronaut into orbit, or creates his own alternative to the Encyclopedia Britannica—his bold, poetic-conceptual works are structured by a visual language of storytelling. Now the Kunsthalle Mannheim is presenting the first major exhibition of the oeuvre of this internationally celebrated artist in continental Europe.
Between Nassau and the North Pole: The Expedition as Artistic Material
Strachan, recipient of the MacArthur Genius Grant, who describes his artistic work as an “unending protest against the status quo”, operates at the interface between art, science, and history. Aeronautics, astronomy, deep sea research, and extreme climatology are just some of the fields from which Strachan creates monumental allegories about the past, present, and future. He evokes historical and cultural references, giving expression to the commonalities and contradictions in the untold stories of historically marginalized people, places, and events. His ambitious project, the Encyclopedia of Invisibility, a compendium now grown to over 3,000 pages, casts light on these untold stories and simultaneously questions the means by which knowledge and power systems arise in the first place.
Bringing Untold Stories to Light
Tavares Strachan explores light and darkness by establishing parallels between writing history and astrophysical phenomena. The light of supernovas, the bright luminescence of exploding stars, stands for the complex interplay of image, language, sculpture, music, universal knowledge, and collective memory which he brings together in the Kunsthalle’s exhibition rooms in breath-taking installations.
Tavares Strachan’s works have already been presented in numerous ambitious exhibitions, amongst others at the Hayward Gallery in London in 2024, at the Venice Biennial in 2019, and the Carnegie International in 2018. Strachan received a BFA at the Rhode Island School of Design in 2003 and an MFA in sculpture at Yale University in 2006. He utilizes both the resources and the community of his place of birth and divides his time between his studio in New York City and Nassau, where he operates an art studio and a research platform B.A.S.E.C. (Bahamas Aerospace and Sea Exploration Center).
Curator: Luisa Heese
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