What does it mean to be Bahamian in an increasingly global cultural dialogue? How does an emerging nation, like the Bahamas, participate in and shape the global cultural landscape when it still has many issues of national identity unexplored? Will the Bahamas be swallowed up in the monolithic stream of North American consumer culture or will it retreat into its historical identity as an escapist paradise?

These are the questions that contemporary artists in the Bahamas are struggling with. At the forefront of this struggle and exploration is a core of emerging artists who are willing to transcend the traditional definitions of Bahamian identity in favor of discovering new expressions that remain hidden beneath the surfaces of our national tourism facade. From his Popopstudios in Nassau, John Cox is creating work that challenges viewers to suspend their preconceptions and journey with him into the symbolic depths of his fluid identity.

A first encounter with his work does not evoke images that seem to directly relate to life in the Bahamas. Littered with Sumo wrestlers, Kimonos, religious symbols from many traditions, and the occasional patch of animal skin, Cox’s work challenges the viewer to go beyond the tensions presented on the surface to reveal the uniting soul of each piece. Working in many mixed media forms, with an emphasis on screen-printing, Cox’s work is parallel to the urban musical process of sampling. Rather than his pieces being a linear visual narrative such as a traditional Bahamian landscape, they present a clash of differing points of view. In a piece called “Me” this clash of perspectives takes center stage. Visually the triptych weaves from water buffalos to baseball players to engineering drawings. The overall effect pulls the viewer into John’s internal vocabulary of symbolic meanings. The piece is experienced like a coded message that requires the viewers to apply themselves to the task of interpretation. Even on the surface, we are a long way from the nice little paintings of island fishing expeditions that have come to monopolize the traditional definitions of Bahamian art.

This tendency to push the viewer beyond the surfaces of his work has also propelled Cox’s exposure beyond the borders of the Bahamas. Although the support for John’s work within Bahamian circles is growing, he has always found much more receptive audiences around the globe. With exhibitions in Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States, Cox has called other Bahamian artists to look beyond their borders and consider the relevance of their work in a larger global context. There is a deeply ingrained local insecurity that before the Bahamas can compete in a global culture, it must first have a clear definition of what is uniquely Bahamian. John’s work sidesteps this sentiment by choosing to see perspective itself as the only unique thing that the Bahamas has to offer. Rather than defining what is Bahamian based on the content (or sometimes even just the colors) of a piece, Cox chooses to define it as the perspective that the artist comes from and fuses into their work. For him the playful Bahamian spirit is our most unique quality and one that has a relevant voice in global dialogue. The smashing together of High and Low culture, the freedom to laugh at ourselves as well as the overall commitment to having fun are all aspects that can be fused into work of any subject matter. It is this playfulness that Cox considers the Bahamian perspective and offers a key to unlocking the symbolism in his work. He is making serious art that hangs in respected galleries but he doesn’t take the work or the process itself too seriously. The works themselves are actually seen as artifacts cast off by the process of synthesizing meaning from one’s experience of living. Like engineering or architectural drawings the works point beyond themselves toward something greater, taking on a secondary quality to the actual art of living.

It is Cox’s personal art of living that is the Rosetta stone for interpreting his work. An avid cyclist, one series of pieces presented a diverse set of objects (rubber tubing, small wooden sticks, and rusted metal shards) that John had gathered during his cycling adventures. These apparently random objects were infused with personal symbolic meaning though their re-contextualization as works of art. Almost nothing is off limits to this kind of symbolic sampling. Through portals like cable television, the Internet, and fashion, the act of living in the Bahamas has begun to fuse with cultural touchstones from all over the map. As a person living in this haze of influences, Cox expands his vocabulary to include symbols from the pantheons of art history to the corporate logos that have begun to dot the roadways of most emerging nations. They are all fair game for reinterpretation and they are all ingredients in what it now means to be Bahamian.

Over the next several months as Cox exhibits his work around the globe, he will be offering new perspectives on what it means to be Bahamian. John’s perspectives have been born of an internal journey of reinterpreting the external world and not simply accepting it as it is. This is a process that challenges the larger Bahamian cultural dialogue to go beyond its colonial roots and discover its unique perspective and viewpoint that it can offer to the world.

If you would like to see more of John Cox’s work visit www.popopstudios.com.

Christian McCabe
www.seeward.com
2006