Bahamas-born artist Tavares Strachan is renowned for his distinctive interdisciplinary practice that blends art with history, science and cultural critique, asking us to reconsider our received knowledge of the world.

Aeronautics, astronomy, deep-sea exploration, and extreme climatology are but some of the thematic arenas out of which Strachan creates monumental allegories that tell of cultural displacement, human aspiration, and mortal limitation. Themes of invisibility, displacement, and loss are central to his work, which questions historically canonised narratives that marginalise or obscure others.

His unique and impressive 3000-page “The Encyclopedia of Invisibility” contains over 17,000 entries on people, places and things excluded from history. It is a written and illustrated inverse of the Encyclopedia Britannica, functioning as Literature but also taking on the role of Sculpture.

The compendium includes mentions of an Arctic explorer and an astronaut who, Strachan says, “looked like me”. “Can these lost stories hold the key that unlocks our sense of belonging?” the artist asks in his TED talk. “Lost stories definitely need to be told. Not in small ways. But in ways that match the ambitions of the people that we speak for.”

Strachan was born in Nassau in 1979. He received a BFA in Glass from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2003 and an MFA in Sculpture from Yale University in 2006. He draws on both the resources and community of his birthplace, dividing his time between his studio in New York and Nassau, where he has established an art studio and scientific research platform B.A.S.E.C. (Bahamas Aerospace and Sea Exploration Center) and OKU, a not-for-profit community project encompassing an artist residency and exhibition spaces, a scholarship scheme, and after-school creative programs. The artist is represented by Marian Goodman Gallery and Perrotin.

Links: Website (isolatedlabs.com) | Instagram (www.instagram.com/tavaresstrachan)

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