God's True Cashmere Customized Hat

Tavares Strachan’s conceptual, interdisciplinary practice activates connections between art, history, science, and cultural critique to mobilize our senses, intellect and curiosity, 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 canonized narratives that marginalize or obscure others.

Strachan was born in 1979 in Nassau, Bahamas, and currently lives and works between New York City and Nassau. 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).

He has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation fellowship in 2022. Strachan’s work has been featured in numerous solo exhibitions including You Belong Here, Prospect 3. Biennial, New Orleans; The Immeasurable Daydream, Biennale de Lyon, Lyon; Polar Eclipse, The Bahamas National Pavilion 55th Venice Biennale, Venice; Seen/Unseen, Undisclosed Exhibition, New York; Orthostatic Tolerance: It Might Not Be Such a Bad Idea if I Never Went Home Again, MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge; among others. The Hayward Gallery in London recently featured Strachan in a solo exhibition, titled Tavares Strachan: There Is Light Somewhere in summer 2024. His first museum exhibition in Los Angeles is currently on view at LACMA, titled The Day Tomorrow Began.

A portion of the proceeds from this sale will go in support of Foundation OKU.

Artist Portrait: Courtesy of the artist and Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Photo by Alex Welsh.