The Constituency
November 13 - November 1, 2025
Opening Reception:
November 13, 5:00-7:00PM Free
The Constituency is the first of a series of works by Tamika Galanis born with Bahamian archival futurities in mind. Galanis’s work counters the widely held paradisiacal view of the Caribbean, the origins of which arose post-emancipation through a controlled, systematic visual framing and commodification of the tropics. Emphasizing the importance of Bahamian cultural identity for cultural preservation, Galanis documents aspects of Bahamian life not curated for tourist consumption to intervene in the historical archive.
The exhibition presents images from constituencies in New Providence and Cat Island, Bahamas. Galanis spent several years photographing members of these communities going about their everyday lives; working and playing, at leisure and in celebration. The domino table, an element of one of the photographs and a common sight in New Providence, has been recreated as an installation in the gallery to bring a piece of these communities to tangible life here in Syracuse.
The three-channel video A Thousand Points of Light is created from archival footage of old home movies of Galalnis’s family. The films are a representation of her grandmother's memories at a time when her physical and cognitive decline coincided with the devastating hurricane season of 2017. Hurricane winds carry much into the ether, and Galanis likens that experience to what it must feel like to wake up to a completely different reality, similar to the way life throughout the Caribbean shifted after the major storms like the hurricane seasons of 2017 and 2019.
The audio in the piece is drawn from the speeches of two prime ministers, both speaking to the UN General Assembly on the effects of climate change. One is Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit's address to the 72nd UN General Assembly, where he pleaded for aid and called attention to the devastation Dominica experienced after Hurricane Maria made landfall in 2017. The piece also includes an excerpt of Prime Minister Mia Mottley’s UN General Assembly address in 2019 after Hurricane Dorian wrought havoc in the Northwestern Bahamian islands.
Although those pictured in the video installation are Galanis’s family, they represent the people of the region as a whole, reminding us of what's in danger of disappearance without climate intervention. The historical narrative as it pertains to Black bodies in the Caribbean is one of erasure. Everyday occurrences become eclipsed by the paradisical narrative—these films and photographs are a reminder that the people of the Bahamas are real people living full lives, and the stakes are high.
Tamika Galanis was born in Oklahoma City, OK, and lives in Syracuse, NY and The Bahamas. Her work has been exhibited at The National Gallery of Art, Nassau, The Bahamas, Pérez Art Museum, Miami, FL, Nasher Museum of Art, Durham, NC, TERN Gallery, Nassau, The Bahamas, apexart, New York, NY, Aspen Institute, Washington, D.C., Des Moines Art Center, Des Moines, IA, Hong Gah Museum, Taipei, TW and Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA, and numerous other venues. She has received grants and residencies from Emory University, Atlanta, GA, Penn Center and UGA Willson Center for Humanities and Arts, St. Helena, SC, Jon B. Lovelace Fellowship for the Study of the Alan Lomax Collection, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., among other awards and recognition for her work.