Anina Major / ADAA Art Show 2022

NOVEMBER 3rd - 6th, 2022

Shoshana Wayne Gallery is proud to announce our participation in the prestigious ADAA Art Show at the Park Avenue Armory in New York, opening to the public November 3rd, with a solo presentation of works from Bahamian artist Anina Major.

The practice of making, the legacy of labor and the entanglement of personal and shared histories are at the heart of Major’s work. Major transforms the artistry of basket-weaving and straw-work from her Bahamian ancestors into clay vessels. Basket-weaving and straw-work are traditions performed primarily by women for economic needs, but one which Major treats with care and reverence through the art of plaiting strands of clay in and out of each other.

For Major, clay acts as an ideal archival material to capture the labor of these traditions. Clay is simultaneously malleable and permanent, displaying traces of the artist and the history in which she is intervening. The organic forms of her ceramic vessels look distorted under the weight of history and take on the appearance of surviving artifacts. They signal the continuity of cultural memory and the endurance that is cultivated through the processes of displacement.

Anina Major is a Bahamian born artist currently living and working in New York City. She holds an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and has been exhibited internationally in the United States, The Bahamas and Europe. Her work can be found in permanent collections including the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Fuller Craft Museum, RISD Museum, and the National Gallery of the Bahamas. She has exhibited in museums and galleries internationally, including Mass MoCA, North Adams, MA; New Museum, New York, NY; National Gallery of The Bahamas, Nassau, Bahamas; and DeCordova Sculpture Park, Lincoln, MA. Major is also the recipient of numerous awards and residencies, including the Socrates Sculpture Park Fellowship and serving as a mentor for the Saint Heron Ceramics Residency Program.