Over the past few years, the Bahamian visual art scene has experienced a noticeable ripening. Younger artists have appeared; established practitioners have made it a priority to pass their knowledge on, and members of the visual art community have employed their abilities to comment on and challenge primitive ways of thought and barriers to society progression.

What makes this more exciting is the fact that members of the Bahamian visual art community are also making their talents and voices known and heard in the international arena. Some of the globetrotting names that have been popping up in creative spaces around the world are Janine Antoni, Blue Curry, Arnold Kemp, Lavar Munroe, Holly Parotti and Tavares Strachan.

Janine Antoni
Freeport-born artist Janine Antoni is currently being featured in 'Incubator' - a collaboration with New Jersey choreographer Stephen Petronio that explores the relationship between sculpture and dance.

Curated by Louis Grachos and Andrea Mellard, the presentation at testsite, in Austin, Texas, will feature site-specific installations, video work, sculpture and photography. Incubator includes the artists' first visual collaboration, "Honey Baby", a video of a folding, tumbling body within a honey-filled environment.

Antoni's work has been exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Museum of Modern Art, SITE Santa Fe, the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin and the 1993 Venice Biennale. She is the recipient of several prestigious awards, including a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellowship in 1998, the Larry Aldrich Foundation Award in 1999, The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in 2011, a 2012 Creative Capital Artist Grant and the 2014 Anonymous Was A Woman award.

Blue Curry
Blue Curry is one of those who have been making their marks in creative spaces across the globe. The Bahamian artist, who is based primarily in London, was recently featured in 'Unsettled Landscapes', a biennial exhibition held at SITE Santa Fe, New Mexico. Unsettled Landscapes focused on contemporary art from the Americas and examining the "urgencies, political conditions and historical narratives that inform the work of contemporary artists across the Americas". The show was on display from July 2014 to January 2015 and studied the work of artists responding to three themes: landscape, territory and trade.

Curry's childhood memories of a tourism-saturated Downtown Nassau were the catalyst for his proposal for Unsettled Landscapes. Curry offered the concept of presenting Downtown Nassau as a "site for sculpture and installation, rather than a site for just consumption".

Curry's work can also be seen at the National Art Gallery of The Bahamas next month, when he takes part in the two-person show, Double Dutch, in collaboration with Bermuda-based artist James Cooper. Double Dutch opens June 2. His work will also be shown at PopopStudios in Freak Dancing, which opens on June 4.

Arnold Kemp
Chairman of the Department of Painting and Printmaking at Virginia Commonwealth University, Arnold Kemp's work has made a name for him abroad.

The Bahamian artist lives and works in Richmond, Virginia. His work has been shown on both coasts of the U.S. and in-between. Kemp is also a writer whose poems have appeared in "Callaloo", Three Rivers Poetry Journal, Agni Review, MIRAGE #4 Period(ical), "River Styx", Nocturnes, Art Journal and "Tripwire".

Currently, Kemp's work in Headless, an exhibition on at creative space Soloway, in Brooklyn, examines the body - specifically one designed to "navigate today's and tomorrow's increasingly mechanistic, efficient and brutal existences". Headless examines the human senses, particularly in relation with modern-day society, pollution and cyber space. Headless will be on display until May 23.

Lavar Munroe
Born and raised in Grant's Town, New Providence, these days Lavar Munroe is no stranger to international acclaim. His pieces been exhibited in the U.S., Brussels, London and, most recently, in the main exhibition at this year's Venice Biennale.

The biennale is the world's oldest international art exhibition of its kind. Established in 1895, the Venice Biennale is comprised of a grouping of individual national pavilions along with a main exhibition led by a respected curator, who selects his or her own theme for the exhibition.

Three of Munroe's large-scale cut-out canvas, collage and mixed media works are featured in the exhibition, which is considered a grouping of some of the world's most foremost and current positions in visual art. Entitled All The World's Futures, the show has been curated by renowned Nigerian-born curator Okwui Enwezor.

Holly Parotti
Holly Parotti will be featured at The Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts (MoCADA) in upcoming exhibition 'Field Notes: Extracts'. Recognized for her use of digital and sculptural media, Parotti frequently explores human relationships and themes of belonging through her work.

MoCADA is known for using visual art to promote dialogue on race-related sociological issues, particularly those affecting the African Diaspora. Curated by Holly Bynoe, Field Notes: Extracts will open in June and will feature the work of seven emerging artists from the Caribbean and its diasporas. Deborah Anzinger, Gilles Elie-dit-Cosaque, Jasmine Thomas Girvan, Vashti Harrison, Kelly Sinnapah Mary, Joiri Minaya and Holly Parotti will be highlighted in the exhibition, which responds to socio-political, gendered and imagined realities.

Tavares Strachan
Tavares Strachan is another Bahamian artist leaving his impression in the United States. Strachan's large scale floating sculpture was recently featured as part of the Prospect New Orleans, Prospect3: Notes for Now biennial, based in New Orleans.

Entitled "You belong here", Strachan built a 100-foot long and 22-foot high neon work that traveled on a 120-foot barge on the Mississippi River. The piece floated up and down the water during the evenings of the biennial's opening weekend, and was docked at Esplanade Street Wharf during other times. Intended as a message to the city, the work encouraged viewers to examine themselves in relation to space. Strachan uses a seemingly straightforward phrase, "You belong here," to evoke a dialogue about the historical undercurrents present throughout the city.

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