Hidden histories, lost stories: Exploring with Tavares Strachan
‘The Encyclopaedia of Invisibility’ installed at the Hayward Gallery, 2024
Tavares Strachan’s striking sculptures burst onto the art scene in London this year, with his installation in the courtyard of Burlington House. As part of the Royal Academy’s ‘Entangled Pasts’ exhibition, Strachan’s ‘The First Supper’ reimagines Leonardo’s famous ‘Last Supper’ with key black figures from history, especially the history of the transatlantic slave trade. Haile Selassie I, emperor of Ethiopia, replaces Christ, and Strachan himself replaces Judas. He places himself in a typically compelling and thought-provoking role.
I was excited to see Strachan taking such a prominent place after first encountering his work at the Venice biennale in 2019 and having my thoughts rearranged by his solo show at Marion Goodman the following year. Strachan excites me not only for the ‘hidden histories’ that he brings to light, but also for the rigorous and real approach that he brings to combining artistic and scientific thought and practice. His current solo show at the Hayward Gallery was therefore a real treat for a holiday visit with a sleeping baby in tow (although incidentally I think the sensory variety of ‘There is light somewhere’ would also have appealed to Alfie).
A key, monumental, work in the show, that underpins Strachan’s work as a whole, is ‘The Encyclopaedia of Invisibility’ which compiles over a decade of research into previously unknown historical figures and stories. It exists as a published tome, a wiki site and an installation. In the latter, selected pages from the encyclopaedia cover the walls of a room, with additional imagery layered on top. In common with many of his large paintings, these include layered diagrams from disciplines across the sciences. Described by curator Ralph Rugoff as ‘schemes that suggest different ways of ordering space and meaning’ these different visual means of producing and communicating knowledge are core to Strachan’s ‘mental process’ and show his engagement with scientific imagery. What is striking is how they are embedded in his approach to thinking about history, not just an aesthetic choice.
Strachan also engages with the processes, materials and techniques of science. Much of his work might loosely be termed ‘exploration’ but, for me, there appears a deeper root to his practice in the methods of exploration, historical and contemporary. In 2009, Strachan undertook cosmonaut training at the Yuri Gagarin centre in Russia, and from 2005 to 2013 he made four expeditions to the Artic and North Pole. These ground his works celebrating the achievements of explorer Matthew Henson and astronaut Robert Henry Lawrence Jr (both largely invisible in history books). But these experiences also inform works intended to instil scientific ambition in young people, notably the Bahamas Aerospace and Sea Exploration Centre (BASEC) launched on his home island. The bodily experience of exploration can be felt in Strachan’s resulting works.
In the series ‘Distant Relatives’, Strachan combines plaster busts of key historical figures - James Baldwin, Harriet Tubman, Nina Simone - with traditional African masks. One day I would like to develop an exhibition on masks, building on our shared experiences of mask-wearing during Covid-19. Strachan’s work would be a key component, but that is an idea for the future. More immediately, the ‘Distant Relatives’ series struck me in his discussion of Derek Walcott, a celebrated poet and dramatist, who was also the subject of a number of sexual harassment and assault suits. Strachan says ‘there is going to be something about almost every character that we look at historically that is going to make us feel uncomfortable … I am an artist because I am interested in the complexity and the difficulty of telling [those] stories … as well as exploring how, as a society, we navigate that.’
What strikes me is that it is his engagement across disciplines which particularly allows him to tell those stories. Challenging disciplinary and academic boundaries appears to me a less-acknowledged aspect of how his work acts as ‘infinite protest’. Perhaps a useful one for many of us to think with, whether aesthetic or activist.