Simone Cambridge, a 2022 Curatorial and Art Writing Fellow at NLS, a Kingston art gallery, is now exhibiting Straw Heritage: “It Comes from the Head” at the National Art Gallery of the Bahamas until March 17, 2025.
In Straw Heritage, Cambridge looks at the connections between straw work and the Transatlantic Slave Trade, colonialism, national identity, gender, migration, environment, tourism, and geography.
During her 5-month fellowship at NLS, she examined archival material and contemporary artwork for themes of gender, local industries, the environment, and colonialism in the straw work of the Bahamas. The NLS Fellowship is a 5-month long mentorship program geared to addressing the dearth of archival scholarship on the work of artists in Jamaica and the Caribbean.
The Bahamian Cambridge has a Bachelor of Arts (double major) in Art History and International Development Studies with a minor in Geography Urban Systems McGill University, Quebec.
Other featured artists in Straw Heritage include Tamika Galanis, Anina Major, Jodi Minnis, and Averia Wright.