Strachan 801

Male speaker:

Welcome to the exhibition TAVARES STRACHAN: SUPERNOVAS—the first major exhibition in continental Europe providing an overview of the Bahamian artist’s work! Whether Tavares Strachan 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 Encyclopædia Brittanica—his bold, poetic-conceptual works are structured by a visual language of storytelling. 

Woman speaker:

Strachan, who describes his artistic work as an “unending protest against the status quo”, explores aspects of science, art, and the environment in order to realize works which are ambitious in terms of both scope and reach. Many of his projects explore the essence of invisibility and question the conditions which frame and legitimate specific histories, individuals, and forms of cultural knowledge, while others are confined to obscurity and eradicated. He creates visual constellations which connect the figures, together with the ideas and ideals they embody, across different cultures and time periods. 

Male speaker:

The exhibition SUPERNOVAS encompasses works from over two decades of artistic praxis. Strachan explores light and darkness by establishing parallels between writing history and astrophysical phenomena. Here the light of supernovas, the bright flash 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. 

Woman speaker:

Tavares Strachan has already exhibited internationally in institutions such as the Brooklyn Museum in New York and the Hayward Gallery, London. In 2013 he designed the first pavilion from the Bahamas at the Venice Biennial and in 2019 was represented in the main exhibition. We now wish you enlightening impressions in the exhibition!