Tavares Strachan’s new LACMA exhibition fuses art, science, history and Afrofuturism

Tavares Strachan likes to blur the lines that separate art, science and historical accounts – as well as past, present and future.

A native of Nassau, Bahamas, he once built a 4.5-ton block of ice in the Alaskan Arctic, FedExed it to the island nation and displayed it in a solar-powered freezer — a stark commentary on climate change, displacement and interconnectedness.

Strachan became the first Bahamian to travel to the North Pole to understand the harsh conditions that greeted Matthew Henson in 1909—a black explorer who accompanied Cmdr. Robert Perry on polar expeditions and possibly the first man to stand on top of the world. His achievements were not recognized for years because he was black.

This piece from Tavares Strachan’s “Interior Giant” series depicts Nina Simone crowned as the Queen of Sheba.

(Allen J. Shebin/Los Angeles Times)

In another project, Strachan honored Robert Henry Lawrence Jr., America’s first black astronaut. He died in a plane crash while training as a test pilot in 1968 before he could participate in any space missions. So Strachan sent a copy of Lawrence-inspired artwork into orbit on a SpaceX rocket.

Now a collection of Strachan’s work is on view at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art for his first museum show in the city, titled “Tomorrow Began.”

The multi-sensory exhibition showcases Strachan’s ability to translate his lifelong passion for scientific inquiry and boundary-pushing adventures into pieces that make you question everything you thought you knew about human development – ​​all while forcing you to see how black achievements are easily written out of the history books.

“The pieces in this particular exhibition that I think people can relate to are when they themselves start to make connections – the synapses start to vibrate,” the 45-year-old artist said during a recent tour of his exhibition. “You start making connections between, for example, these polar explorers Matthew Henson and Robert Henry Lawrence. And then you start thinking about the early explorers who left the African continent and this pioneering spirit that is a part of what it means to be African that is not often expressed or discussed.”

On view through March 29, “Tomorrow Begins” is both fun and serious. There’s a lot to take in: pictures and diagrams, displays of traditional African hairstyles, mohair collages with South African weavers, souvenir ceramics, a rice paddy field for the smell of straw to savor old memories.

A glass maker, Strachan covered a wall with two neon signs that read quotes by James Baldwin, whose words appear right, and Mark Twain, whose words appear above—both the wonder of chemistry and the power of the pen to analyze issues of identity.

In another lofty room, dramatic bronze sculptures flip the script on the triumphs of Western civilization – focusing on the oppressed.

One piece depicts the moon, its surface marked by craters. At its north pole is the Hansen piece. Rising from the south pole of the Moon is an upside-down perigee.

Fitting for an artist who once subjected himself to the physical rigors of cosmonaut training, the show feels like a dialogue between opposing forces – limitlessness and limitation, presence and absence.

Strachan, who lives in New York, said his fascination with science and its hidden histories began when he grew up as a curious and “very stubborn” child in Nassau.

He was about 12 years old when his family bought him the first set of encyclopedias that he remembers. But something was off: a few entries featured notable figures who looked like him.

Tavares Strachan’s show at LACMA includes a room of whimsical ceramic sculptures from his “Interior Giant” series set in a field of fragrant rice grass.

(Allen J. Shebin/Los Angeles Times)

“I think that was my first look at the social sciences,” Strachan said. “Obviously, you can’t collect all this material without making a decision – you decide what is seen and what is not seen. This started me to question the visible and the invisible.”

Strachan began to think about his place in the ecosystem—and the world beyond.

Tired of wearing the clothes his sailor mother had made for him, Strachan raised money to buy them by working on a fishing boat and spent weeks at sea.

In the night, far from the shore, more stars appeared than he could, and he marveled at the waves of phosphorescent creatures.

Strachan learned to navigate by following the movements of celestial bodies and hunting fish by reading the rivers, building on the ancient knowledge passed down by his elders.

Until then, its 700 island archipelago felt like the center of the world. Now his curiosity was a realm of possibilities.

But while his mind wandered across the skies, Strachan could not help but think of the gaps in which the written accounts of pioneer exploits and extraordinary adventures on earth seemed incomplete.

Charles Darwin is a household name, but how many people know that the world’s most famous naturalist learned taxidermy from John Edmonstone, a black ex-slave who owned a bird-stuffing shop in Edinburgh, Scotland?

Strachan was in his 20s when he began to achieve Hansen’s feat.

“Science – this is where knowledge is produced, and has meaning,” said exhibition organizer Diana Navi. “How do we know what we know? I think that’s basically what it is [Strachan]asks

Navi said Strachan’s project resists the “calculation of history,” which he describes as the process in which a dominant group reinforces narratives that ignore or actively suppress the contributions of others.

“Dates are a tool of power,” Nawi said. “How do you take that power for different people and different ideas, but also, how do you break down the single concept of that power?”

In Tavares Strachan’s LACMA presentation, stories of racial progress and remarkable achievement take center stage. This illuminated piece uses glass, argon and electrodes to evoke the spirit of America’s first black astronaut, Robert Henry Lawrence Jr., who died in a plane crash before participating in a space mission.

(Allen J. Shebin/Los Angeles Times)

“In 2020 … it was the taking down of monuments, for example,” New said, referring to the taking down of statues celebrating the Confederacy in the wake of the killing of George Floyd.

“History is apt to be retold and retold,” Nawi said.

This feeling has a lot of meaning in the present.

Some of these removed monuments have been transformed into new works of art that will be on view at MOCA’s Geffen and the Brick exhibition from October 23rd to May 3rd.

Strachan’s work also suggests that there is power in the practice of poetic justice.

Inside a dark room in the exhibit, a life-size, glass “portrait” of astronaut Lawrence appears to be free of gravity. His frame is lit from within from head to toe, by argon in electrical conduits resembling the human circulatory system, revealing his soul.

America’s first black astronaut never left Earth’s atmosphere.

Tavares Strachan poses with his installation “Six Thousand Years”, which is made up of 2,000 panels from his “Encyclopedia of Obscurity”. The leather-bound tome contains 17,000 entries that the artist wrote to draw attention to little-known facts and black trailblazers.

(Allen J. Shebin/Los Angeles Times)

By creating this portrait of Lawrence to capture his spirit, and by launching a satellite in honor of Lawrence into orbit, Strachan wanted to metaphorically help him achieve this goal.

“It’s important to me to make sure that when someone has done something incredible, the level of storytelling matches the nature of the action, so putting something into space and trying to get that energy back into the cosmos,” Strachan said.

“However, it’s about going back 10 years and marveling at the technical work that went into making this glass object.”