Tavares Strachan facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Tavares Strachan
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Strachan in 2017
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| Born | December 16, 1979 |
| Education | College of the Bahamas |
| Alma mater | Rhode Island School of Design Yale University |
| Occupation | Conceptual artist |
Tavares Henderson Strachan, born in 1979, is an artist from the Bahamas. He creates amazing art using different things like science, technology, old stories, history, and ideas about exploring. His art often uses many different types of media. He lives and works in New York City and Nassau, Bahamas.
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Early Life and Learning
Tavares Strachan was born in Nassau, Bahamas, on December 16, 1979. When he was a kid, his family was part of Junkanoo. This is a big yearly parade and party in the Bahamas. It has live music, dancing, and amazing costumes made by hand. This helped him get interested in art.
Strachan first started as a painter. He earned his art degree from the College of the Bahamas in 1999. In 2000, he moved to the United States. He joined the glass art program at the Rhode Island School of Design. There, he started making more conceptual art projects. These projects showed the main ideas and simple style he would use later. After finishing his degree in 2003, Strachan went to Yale University. He earned his Master of Fine Arts degree in Sculpture in 2006.
Amazing Art Projects
Tavares Strachan's art explores how art, science, and the environment connect. He has worked with many groups and places from different fields.
The Distance Between What We Have and What We Want (2006)
One of Strachan's most famous projects is The Distance Between What We Have and What We Want. For this 2006 project, he traveled to the cold Alaskan Arctic. He dug out a huge block of ice, weighing 2.5 tons. Then, he sent it by FedEx all the way to his home in the Bahamas. The ice block was shown in a special freezer powered by the sun. It was placed in the yard of his old elementary school.
This artwork was very powerful to see. It also had a deep meaning. It showed how delicate Earth's natural systems are. It also talked about moving things and people from one place to another. The project also highlighted Matthew Henson. He was an American explorer who helped discover the North Pole but was not always recognized.
Orthostatic Tolerance Series
In 2004, Strachan started a big art series called Orthostatic Tolerance. This name refers to the stress astronauts feel when they go into and come back from space. This project was shown in parts between 2008 and 2011. It included photos, videos, drawings, sculptures, and art setups.
The project showed Strachan's own experience. He trained like a cosmonaut in Russia. He also did space travel experiments in Nassau, Bahamas. He even created his own space center there. He called it the Bahamas Air and Space Exploration Center (BASEC). It was like his country's version of NASA.
Seen/Unseen (2011)
In 2011, Strachan had an art show called Seen/Unseen. This show displayed many of his past and new artworks. It was held in a secret place in New York City. The public was not allowed to visit it on purpose.
The show explored ideas of being present and absent. It focused on the artist's goal to show art in a way that some parts are seen, but others are only ideas. He wanted the exhibition itself to be a work of art. Seen/Unseen was a very big and unusual show. It offered a calm, thoughtful experience. It featured over 50 artworks. These included drawings, photos, videos, sculptures, and large art setups. All of this was in a huge 20,000-square-foot industrial building. Even though people couldn't visit, the show was fully documented. It had a website and a book with pictures.
ENOCH (2018)
On December 3, 2018, Strachan launched his project ENOCH into space. He worked with the LACMA Art + Technology Lab on this. ENOCH is a small satellite. It was made to tell the forgotten story of Robert Henry Lawrence Jr.. He was the first African American astronaut chosen for any national space program.
The satellite was launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base. It went up on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The sculpture orbited the Earth for three years. It followed a special path called a Sun-synchronous orbit. It came back into Earth's atmosphere on December 21, 2021.
The First Supper (Galaxy Black) (2021–2023)
In February 2024, Strachan showed his sculpture The First Supper (Galaxy Black). It was displayed at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. This bronze sculpture is covered in black and gold. It reimagines Leonardo Da Vinci's famous painting, The Last Supper. But Strachan's version features important Black historical figures.
Haile Selassie takes the place of Jesus in the artwork. Strachan himself takes the place of Judas. The figures included in the sculpture are: Tavares Strachan (a self-portrait), Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Harriet Tubman, Shirley Chisholm, Marcus Garvey, Zumbi dos Palmares, Haile Selassie, Mary Seacole, Matthew Henson, Marsha P. Johnson, King Tubby, Derek Alton Walcott, and Robert Henry Lawrence.
Art Galleries and Curating
Since 2020, Tavares Strachan has been represented by Marian Goodman, a well-known art gallery. In 2020, the gallery's London space showed In Plain Sight. This was Strachan's first big solo show in the UK. Also in 2020, his artwork The Awakening was shown at Goodman's gallery in New York.
In 2022, Strachan also organized an art show for his mentor, Stanley Burnside. The exhibition was called Stanley Burnside: As Time Goes On. It was shown at Galerie Perrotin in New York.
Awards and Honors
Tavares Strachan has received many important awards. These include a MacArthur Foundation Grant in 2022. He was also the first artist-in-residence at the Allen Institute in 2018. He received an art grant from the LACMA Art + Technology Lab in 2014. Other awards include a Tiffany Foundation grant in 2008, a Grand Arts Residency Fellowship in 2007, and an Alice B. Kimball fellowship in 2006. In 2013, he represented the Bahamas at the 55th Venice Biennale, a major international art exhibition.
See also
- List of Bahamian artists
