Allegiance, 2022
Nassau-born, multidisciplinary artist Tavares Strachan makes his New York debut with his latest exhibit, The Awakening, now through June 11, at the Marian Goodman Gallery.
Prepare for an exhibit that breaks convention. It is a 40-minute interactive, immersive experience. Depending what time of day you decide to go see this exhibit, your visit is liable to be a little bit different than the others. There are endless details to examine, from dimensions of football fields and basketball courts on paintings, historical timelines, performances, to set design pieces with album jackets, to reading tiny printed names and covers of publications such as Jet, a Black lifestyle magazine that launched in the 1950s.
Incorporating elements of Strachan’s passion for science, history, politics, and sports, the exhibit explores the Black diaspora, with focus on the life of Jamaican political activist Marcus Mosiah Garvey. Garvey ran the Black Star Line, the first Black owned steamship, and used it to help create a link between America and Africa, liberating individuals born into slavery, or descendants of enslaved people.
The Awakening is the first of a trilogy, that will conclude with two more exhibits; In Total Darkness at the Galerie Marian Goodman in Paris, and, In Broad Daylight, at the Galerie Perrotin, Paris. The two exhibits will be on view concurrently in fall 2022.
Strachan diligently studies his subjects; he is also a voracious student of life. In 2018, he created Enoch, a tribute to Robert Henry Lawrence Jr., the first African-American astronaut, who died in a supersonic jet crash in 1967 before he was able to reach space. Strachan at one point trained to be an astronaut. He managed to send the golden urn with Lawrence Jr.’s likeness into space, using a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
For more information and tickets (by appointment only) to the The Awakening, visit mariangoodman.com