Anina Major

Aug 22

Written By Admin

KEEPERS

Anina Major tethers her sense of self and place between the United States and her homeland of the Bahamas through sculptures, installations, and performances that navigate the realities of diasporic life. She intertwines past, present, and future as she plaits the walls of her best-known work: ceramic vessels and sculptures resembling bas- kets. Major translates the straw-weaving techniques that many Bahamians, including her grandmother, have prac- ticed to support their families for hun- dreds of years into clay. Tourist interest has historically supported straw craft in the Bahamas, but with a decrease in its demand by visitors to the islands, it is in peril of being forgotten.

Through clay, a material that has been key to the survival of artifacts and has shaped our understanding of human history, Major immortalizes the vulnerable tradition and recontextualizes the value of these crafts and the people who make them. She also underscores the disparity between leisure and labor depending on race, gender, and class within the tourist economy. Despite the distance, she is on a mission to underscore the fragility of history without stewardship while protecting and carrying forth a critical cultural inheritance on her own terms.

B. 1981, Nassau, Bahamas
Lives and works in New York, NY, and Bennington, VT

aninamajor.com
@aninamajor