FROM TIME: Water Has A Perfect Memory
The 4th iteration of the NAGB’s Inter-Island Traveling Exhibition programming, “From Time: Water Has A Perfect Memory”, in many ways functions as a time capsule. Using historical knowledge and visual interpretations to engage with The Bahamas’s past and present, we are able to envision a more hopeful future. Including colonial works from the 1800s to the post-independence contemporary practice of the last few decades, “From Time” invites conversations about slavery and colonialism to examine how such institutions generated the gross accumulation of wealth and fueld the subsequent industrial era boom that serves as a catalyst for the climate injustices we now find ourselves at the frontlines of.
About
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The Inter-Island Traveling Exhibition (ITE) was developed by myself and Abby Smith who was the museum’s Education & Community Outreach Officer.
The concept revolved around ideas of “paying it forward” and giving younger generations the opportunities that were not present for those living in Family Islands in The Bahamas. It was a direct way to combat the difficulties around the centralizing of the country’s resources in the capital whilst those living in the margins struggled with access.
We can’t call it a National Collection if it doesn’t make it to the whole Nation, so that’s where we started.
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“From Time” is the 4th iteration of the ITE and was curated by myself and the museum’s current Community Outreach Officer, Zearier Munroe Wilkinson.
This time, our storytelling, still using the works from National Collection, centered on ideas of the precarity, resilience, and frustrations of the country in the post-Dorian era.
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“All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was.” — Toni Morrison
In an environment that is becoming increasingly untenable and unstable for us, we must reconnect with our adaptability and our capacity to be fluid like water. To re-imagine a future that can hold us, the future we desire, we must do so whilst remembering lessons from our collective past. “From Time: Water Has A Perfect Memory” draws on works from the National Collection to prompt our thoughts on matters of sustainability, environment, evolution and future-building in our beloved Bahamas and Caribbean space.
With colonial works from the 1800s, to the independent contemporary practice of the last few decades, “From Time” opens up conversations on slavery and colonialism, and how that gross accumulation of wealth and the booming industrial era it generated served as the catalyst for the climate injustice we are now experiencing. The free labour and resources forcefully extracted through slavery in the height of the colonial era are what much of today’s exploitative economy is founded on - and the disparity it produced thereafter. The lack of concern for the environment in the pursuit of profit is the foundation laid by the industrial era, and we are left with its messy aftermath in global warming. But just as water flows through a cycle from the sea to the sky and back down again, the late-stage capitalism we are now in has oversaturated itself and has no choice but to come crashing back down. And, we as global citizens, have no choice but to make a change for our environment and our lives.
These artworks are visual interpretations and engagements with our past and present. How can we best employ and utilise our cultural patrimony to inform and better envision the future we hope for? Armed with collective knowledge of the past, we can begin to consider the potential and possibility embedded within our Caribbean archival history. Understanding where we come from, on our own terms, gives us the tools necessary in post-colonial societies to dare to imagine a hopeful future, after having overcome seemingly impossible injustices--environmental, humanitarian and otherwise--in times gone by.
This exhibition is in some ways a time capsule, collapsing the Bahamian past, present and future into one space. What do we want future generations to take away and build on from who we are now as a people? In thinking of the human inclination towards legacy, how is it we would best want to be remembered? How can we think of ourselves in our best light and shine that light into a future that feels less bleak as we deal with the current climate crisis?
The NAGB’s Inter-IslandTravelling Exhibition was born out of a spirit of connectivity, to demarginalise the Family Islands and bring wider access to our cultural heritage. The National Collection should be just that, the property of the nation as a whole - not solely centered in Nassau. This interconnectedness and the recognition of community is key to our future-building, and our re-building efforts with increasingly destructive storms. As our standards for survival rise with the tide, we must like water seek our own level and keep our heads, humanity and dignity above the growing surge.
People of The Bahamas regardless of colour, creed, gender, orientation, nationality, or any of the many ways we know ourselves have been resilient from time. But, as we look to our timelines of art and cultural history we can find ways to not just survive but thrive in the afro-future.
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This particular exhibition has traveled to the islands of Eleuthera and Exuma.
Overall, of the 17 main inhabited islands, ITE exhibition programming has (since its inception in 2015) been able to reach citizens in: Grand Bahama, Abaco, Exuma, Eleuthera, Andros., Long Island, as well as a special virtual ITE in accordance with social distancing protocols during the earlier days of the COVID-19 pandemic.