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 installations that mix science, technology, old stories, history, and exploration. He lives and works in New York City and Nassau, Bahamas.
Contents
Early Life and Learning
Strachan was born in Nassau, Bahamas, on December 16, 1979. He first learned about art as a child through his family's involvement in Junkanoo. This is a special yearly parade and celebration in the Bahamas. It features live music, dancing, and amazing costumes made by different groups.
Strachan 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 department at the Rhode Island School of Design. There, he began to work on more conceptual projects. These projects showed the main ideas and simple style of his later art. After getting his art degree in 2003, Strachan earned his Master of Fine Arts degree in Sculpture from Yale University in 2006.
Amazing Art Projects
Tavares Strachan's art often explores how art, science, and the environment connect. He has worked with many different groups and places.
The Ice Block Project (2006)
One of Strachan's most famous projects is The Distance Between What We Have and What We Want (2006). For this, he traveled to the cold Arctic in Alaska. He dug out a huge block of ice, weighing 2.5 tons! Then, he had it shipped all the way to his home country, 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 showed how delicate Earth's systems are. It also highlighted the story of Matthew Henson. Henson was an American explorer who helped discover the North Pole but didn't get much recognition.
Training Like an Astronaut
In 2004, Strachan started a big project called Orthostatic Tolerance. This name refers to the stress astronauts feel when they go into and come back from space. This project included photos, videos, drawings, and sculptures. It showed Strachan's experience training like a cosmonaut. He trained at the Yuri Gagarin Training Center in Star City, Russia. He also did space travel experiments in Nassau. These were part of the Bahamas Air and Space Exploration Center (BASEC). This was the artist's own version of NASA for his country.
Art You Can't Always See (2011)
In 2011, Strachan had an exhibition called Seen/Unseen. It showed many of his past and present artworks. This show was in a secret place in New York City. It was not open to the public. The exhibition explored ideas of being present and absent. It showed how some parts of art are visible, while others are more about the idea. Strachan wanted the exhibition itself to be a work of art. Even though people couldn't visit, the show was fully documented online and in a book.
Sending Art to Space (2018)
On December 3, 2018, Strachan launched his project called ENOCH into space! He worked with the LACMA Art + Technology Lab on this. ENOCH is a small satellite that tells the forgotten story of Robert Henry Lawrence Jr.. He was the first African American astronaut chosen for any national space program.
The satellite launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. It orbited Earth for three years before coming back down on December 21, 2021.
A New Last Supper (2024)
In February 2024, Strachan showed his artwork The First Supper (Galaxy Black) in London. This large bronze sculpture looks like 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. Strachan himself is in the place of Judas.
The figures in the sculpture are:
- Tavares Strachan (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
- Robert Henry Lawrence
Art Galleries and Curating
Since 2020, Tavares Strachan has been represented by Marian Goodman, a famous art gallery. In 2020, the gallery showed his first big solo exhibition in the UK, called In Plain Sight. Later that year, his work The Awakening was shown at Goodman's gallery in New York.
Strachan also helped organize a solo exhibition for his mentor, Stanley Burnside, in 2022. The show, called Stanley Burnside: As Time Goes On, was at Galerie Perrotin in New York.
Awards and Honors
Tavares Strachan has received many important awards:
- A MacArthur Foundation Grant (2022)
- The first Allen Institute artist-in-residence (2018)
- LACMA Art + Technology Lab artist grant (2014)
- Tiffany Foundation grant (2008)
- Grand Arts Residency Fellowship (2007)
- Alice B. Kimball fellowship (2006)
In 2013, he represented the Bahamas at the 55th Venice Biennale, a very important international art exhibition.
See also
- List of Bahamian artists
