Tavares Strachan
Tavares Strachan is a multimedia artist who works in New York and in his hometown of Nassau in the Bahamas. His art explores subjects such as aeronautics, astronomy, deep-sea exploration, and extreme climatology, and has been featured in the Biennale de Lyon (2013), the Carnegie International in Pittsburgh (2018), and the Venice Biennale (2013 and 2019). He is represented by Marian Goodman Gallery, New York, where he will have a solo show in May 2022. JUNKANOO
While I was growing up in the Bahamas, one of my earliest memories was of my mother waking me up at midnight on Christmas to go to Junkanoo, a Bahamian street parade with African roots. It combines live music and dance with elaborate handmade costumes and occurs every year on Boxing Day and on New Year’s Day. This event is living history; many believe it originated several centuries ago, when African slaves on Bahamian plantations were permitted to take part in their own celebrations on Bay Street in
Review: Small Axe- Mangrove | Forge Today
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There s always joy within the pain : Steve McQueen on Mangrove and Black Lives Matter movement Rasha Ali, USA TODAY © GREGORIO BORGIA/AP Director Steve McQueen s Small Axe anthology series tells the story of Black struggle, but also Black joy and resilience.
Steve McQueen s Small Axe film series sheds light on untold stories of Black people s experiences with racial discrimination and police harassment, but amid the trauma, he also highlights two key themes: Black joy and Black resilience.
The five-part anthology, which launched in November on Amazon Prime with Mangrove, takes place in the 1960s, 70s and 80s, and centers on stories about those within London s West Indian community who made it their mission to dismantle racist systems.
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Elements of Education, the fifth installment of Steve McQueen s Amazon Prime Small Axe film anthology series, could have played as comedy if the circumstances weren t tragic. One scene places its main character Kingsley (Kenyah Sandy) in a room with what will be one of his classmates at the school to which he s been transferred, a big-eyed girl wearing a vacant expression who communicates by barking like a dog.
Later a teacher clumsily strums his guitar as he sings House of the Rising Sun off-key, eyes pinched closed, as his students deflate at their desks. This performance masquerades as a lesson since at the end of this criminal display, he asks the children who wrote the song. Of course they don t know. The Animals, he says sagely, repeating it so they ll remember.
The director’s “Small Axe” anthology intimately portrays Black spaces.
Parisa Taghizedeh/Amazon Studios
Shaniqua Okwok and Amarah-Jae St. Aubyn in “Lovers Rock.”
Mangrove, the
first film in Steve McQueen’s five-part anthology series, “Small Axe,” begins
with Frank Crichlow (Shaun Parkes), the proprietor of a local West Indian
restaurant, walking through the Notting Hill section of London while “Try Me”
by Bob Marley and the Wailers plays in the background. He crosses a
construction site where Black children are happily running around a makeshift
playground comprised of overturned trash bins, construction beams, an old
mattress, and a baby carriage. In the background, there is graffiti that reads
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