#averia wright

Bahamian artist and the Lyford Cay Foundation’s 2015 Harry Moore Memorial in the Arts Scholar, Averia Wright, just recently completed her graduate studies at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio with an MFA in Sculpture and Expanded Practice as well as with a Certificate in Museum Studies.

Wright’s graduate degree thesis is entitled “Dualities: Casting Identity” and was recently showcased in an exhibition held at the Trisolini Gallery at Ohio University, May 1st-5th. The exhibition was the culmination of three years of work where the artist explored her own identity within the scope of how outsiders viewed her, where she was from, and within the confines of the industry in which she was raised.

In her statement, Wright writes, “Observing and working alongside my mother in the Straw Market from my childhood to this day, I have become exhausted by the duality of identity to conform and to be hospitable, while also admiring the resiliency to master the craft of production and retail. My experiences are tied to being indoctrinated in an island nation, which submits to its geopolitical setting as a place of escape and servitude to the foreign masses. In that regard, losing oneself and cultural identity is constantly rehashed and investigated. Through my work, I hope to use the industry to reveal cultural nuances that we can appreciate that the tourist may not see.

“The material I use to convey this conflict of ambivalence for me is the ‘material’ of the tourism industry – souvenirs and straw – which hold cross-cultural properties that confirm the dichotomy of Bahamian identity itself. I hope to convey an observation with a sense of wittiness, using the materials that foster the tourism industry in The Bahamas, the importation of mass-produced souvenirs and the production of those souvenirs considered Bahamian.