MFA|EDA 2016 Thesis Exhibition: Hacking the Narrative: Telling Counter-Tropic Stories

Tamika Galanis: Hacking the Narrative: Telling Counter-Tropic Stories
Hacking the Narrative is a collection of art works, which intervene in the widely held paradisiacal view of Bahamian cultural identity. Archival documentary materials dated from the 18th and 19th centuries account for a seemingly-idyllic time during which the Bahama Islands were first marketed globally as a tourist destination: post-emancipation Bahamas. Systematically taught to revile their Black selves and forced to assimilate to European standards, Africans displaced to the Caribbean via the Atlantic Slave Trade secretly maintained cultural practices such as obeah, bush medicine, and Junkanoo. These works are a celebration of the Afro-Bahamian cultural identity countering the tropical ideal.