Tavares Strachan: I Belong Here

In 2005, the New York–based Bahamian artist Tavares Strachan created “The Distance Between What We Have and What We Want”: a four-ton block of sub-Arctic ice, shipped to his Nassau elementary school and housed in a solar-powered refrigerator unit. Themes of transformation, presence, and absence, and the human ability to withstand pressure caused by quick changes of altitude, have been recurrent concerns for Strachan. His experience at the Russian Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City and skill as a master diver, have both played a role in his art. This monograph focuses on Strachan’s recent sculpture of white neon tubing, simulating a stop-action photograph of imploding or exploding words to either affirm or refute its statement about identity. Strachan has been selected as the first representative of the Bahamas at the 2013 Venice Biennale.