Tavares Strachan: In Total Darkness

The exhibition at Galerie Marian Goodman is a journey into time and space, mingling past and contemporary narratives through a series of domestic and spiritual spaces. Through this immersive and site-specific experience, which incorporates mixed-media and multilayered sculptural works, Strachan summons a large spectrum of historical and cultural references. In Total Darkness engages with French colonialism through an investigation of the Haitian Revolution, the first victorious revolt of Black slaves, and in so doing, Strachan questions our presumed knowledge of history.

Central to the exhibition is The Encyclopedia of Invisibility, an ongoing research project presented for the first time in France. The work “has to do with people, places and things that have been left out of history. And I thought it would be fitting to use this encyclopedia as the kind of groundwork for thinking about ways which things that have been left out become included, a place where all the invisible things can be seen,” Strachan explains. Referencing the Invisible, Strachan’s own journey as a Bahamian-born artist, whose coming of age was marked by a realization that his education had been obscured by a Western-centric vision of the world, comes full circle in this immersive journey that explores key figures of Caribbean history.

Tavares Strachan was born in 1979 in Nassau, Bahamas, and currently lives and works between New York City and Nassau. He received a BFA in Glass from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2003 and an MFA from Yale University in 2006. Strachan’s work has been the feature of many exhibitions, including Always, Sometimes, Never, Frye Art Museum, Seattle, WA (2018); You Belong Here, Prospect 3. Biennial, New Orleans, LA (2014); The Immeasurable Daydream, Biennale de Lyon, France (2013); Polar Eclipse, The Bahamas National Pavilion 55th Venice Biennale, Italy (2013); Seen/Unseen, Undisclosed Exhibition, New York, NY (2011); Orthostatic Tolerance: It Might Not Be Such a Bad Idea if I Never Went Home Again, MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, MA (2010); and You Can Do Whatever You Like (Orthostatic Tolerance Project), Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA (2009); among others.