Skip to content

There Is Light Somewhere

Tavares Strachan: There Is Light Somewhere

(Hayward Gallery, 18 June – 1 September 2024)

 

Review by Halina Edwards

 

If given the chance, I would love to visit There Is Light Somewhere again. It was the first time I had seen an exhibition of Tavares Strachan’s work, and it served as my introduction to him as an artist. On the ground floor of the exhibition and at the entrance were huge, sculpted heads of famous historical Black figures, such as Nanny of the Maroons and Marcus Garvey, that looked like they had plummeted at a million miles per hour from space and crash-landed into the exhibition. Their surfaces have cracks accentuated with gold paint, highlighting their terracotta hue.

Walking into the exhibition, you are immersed in illuminated photomontage collages that have a very specific visual language, which at first wasn’t so clear to me. Images of Elizabeth II, African masks, animals, outer space, puzzles and silhouettes of cultural and historical figures can be seen in these works. Still trying to understand Strachan’s perspective while exploring his use of space, I entered a room with a clinical, almost sterile atmosphere. The room was entirely covered – floor to ceiling – with pages from his Encyclopedia of Invisibility (2014 – present), while the book itself sat at the centre. Strachan has described this self-created encyclopaedia as a ‘home for lost stories’, highlighting histories and facts about peoples, cultures and individuals who have been forgotten, marginalised or under-represented in Western historical narratives.

Still puzzled, but realising Strachan was invisibly teaching us how to read his work, my favourite part of the exhibition was learning about his passion for space exploration. Born and raised in Nassau, Bahamas, Strachan’s upbringing forced him to think bigger and explore further than anything he knew. ‘Of course, growing up on an island, you fall in love with being an explorer. You want to leave,’ he remarked in an interview with Vogue magazine. This section expanded into an overview of the artist’s achievements: expeditions to the North Pole, space training in Russia to become a cosmonaut, launching a rocket into the Earth’s stratosphere and founding his own space company, the Bahamian Aerospace and Sea Exploration Centre (BASEC). This helped contextualise Strachan’s broader practice, revealing a lens through which he views the world. Themes of displacement, invisibility and loss underpin his work, intersecting with science, exploration and culture to reclaim agency for the voiceless.

With the change of terrain on the third floor of the exhibition, now becoming a textured terracotta surface, I felt as though I’d arrived on the red planet Mars. In the middle of this new terrain was an installation, Intergalactic Palace (2024), a shelter inspired by Ugandan ceremonial architecture traditionally used for crowning kings. A commanding soundscape emanated from the structure, drawing you inside. At its centre was a gold DJ deck, surrounded by busts of historical Black figures. The shelter’s walls flickered with lights that responded to the rhythm of the soundtrack; combining fragmented words and music.

Outside, on an upper terrace of the Hayward Gallery, a 14-metre-long ship Black Star (2024) – a scale model of Marcus Garvey’s flagship passenger vessel SS Yarmouth – floated on water. Garvey founded the Black Star Line to facilitate international trade among Black communities and to support the repatriation of formerly enslaved African Americans and their descendants to Africa. Walking, or wading through Tavares Strachan’s world, the exhibition occupied space with confidence, becoming its own medium, with its own atmosphere. The experience felt like stepping onto his personal planet, populated by unique terrains, people and objects that he has brought temporarily into our orbit. I would love There Is Light Somewhere to come round again.

Search