- Artist or Maker
- Anina Major
Bahamas, born 1981, active United States, New York - Title
- The Eye
- Date Made
- 2021
- Medium
- Stoneware, sea glass, sand
- Dimensions
- 13 × 15 1/2 × 15 in. (33.02 × 39.37 × 38.1 cm)
- Accession Number
- M.2022.188
- Collecting Area
- Decorative Arts and Design
- Curatorial Notes
As a child in the Bahamas, Anina Major learned how to braid straw baskets from her grandmother. Plaited straw objects are often derided as women’s craft made for tourists, but the artist was drawn to their complex history. Scholars trace the Bahamian practice of weaving and braiding palm leaves back centuries to Indigenous and enslaved African craftspeople, and have documented influences from Indigenous American, African, and European basketmaking. Major’s Plait series, which includes The Eye, honors this tradition by re-creating the technique in the enduring medium of clay. As she explains, “The objects my grandmother made will deteriorate. They are made from the tree palms. There’s something beautiful about me taking that practice and putting it into an object that will exist as some kind of evidence that we were here.” The open, woven form of The Eye evokes a tropical storm, suggesting both the strength and fragility of the artist’s native country.
In Anina Major: We All Come Across Water, a video produced in conjunction with MASS MoCA’s exhibition Ceramics in the Expanded Field (2021−23), the artist discusses the significance of Bahamian straw work and demonstrates how she translates straw plaiting techniques into clay (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hg9w3ok5nmg).
Staci Steinberger
2022
- Copyright
- © Anina Major
