Thinkin…
Been thinking about the other site, that other project that was my 2004: the Famous Faces of Nassau and what it means or what it could mean. As you can see I’ve been fixing up this site and if you head over to that website you will see that I’ve been doing some housecleaning over there too… (that would be if you had seen it before… Just take my word for it)
In doing the cleaning up and the extra programming work (the little I know) to get these two sites working, i got to thinking of the future of the entire “famous faces” concept and how the website as an extension of the entire concept is just woefully underdeveloped… If you were a visitor to the site from Holland, how do you know what the paintings are about, how do you understand the concept, will it make any sense to you? Obviously not. It probably doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to the people in Nassau in its present form…
What about the service to the people that we painted? The collection of faces is probably more than I imagined it would be when I conceptualized the project. (This conciousness came out of some discussions with NAGB curator Erica James) But it is a very tidy time capsule of the entire Bahamian society, a capsule that needs more data. I think that there should be bio’s of these people, because in the end, this concept is more anthropological than anything else. By taking the concepts of “famous” and “face” and boiling them down to their most value neutral positions, we have preserved something of the society in 2004. More needs to be said about these people, who they are and what their story is, and what is the mythology that surrounds them.
It will be interesting to note what the passage of time does to the list of the thirty; someone said at the shows opening that what we should do is have a “famous faces” show every year. Of course that idea is not practical. Will the list of people change that dramatically year over year? I suppose it could be said that the list that we generated was very sympathetic to the proletariat, but deservedly so in my opinion. Had the list been skewed any other way, it would have reeked with the stench of cliché and too much brown-nosing. In my view it only makes sense how it was done.
Can the show be mounted again? I definitely think so. In twenty or more years the thirty paintings will offer an interesting look back to the Bahamas of 2004. At that time a sequel would make sense. A “famous faces 2024″ would be interesting, by that time (if I’m still living) to see how the politics had changed, where the world was (in 2004) and whether or not we moved forward. It would be exciting again. It would be art.
But the website can stay, and grow. It is a project that needs to be done, a work that is not finished. I see it now.