A message from Tom Rankin, Director of the Master of Fine Arts in Experimental and Documentary Arts program at Duke University:
We are proud and pleased to share the news that Tamika Galanis has been awarded a Jon B. Lovelace Fellowship at the John W. Kluge Center in the Library of Congress where she will be conduct research on her project, “Activating the Archive—Engaging Bahamian Folk Culture Past and Present.” This fellowship provides Galanis with time to work in the rich collections of folk and traditional culture at the Library of Congress as well as engage with other archival resources on the representation and history of the Bahamas. In addition, Tamika Galanis’ own original documentary work will become an essential and active component of any future understanding of Bahamian culture and history.
Galanis received her MFA in Experimental and Documentary Arts at Duke University in 2016 and is currently the post-MFA Fellow in the Documentary Arts at the Center for Documentary Arts at Duke University where she is teaching and continuing her field and archival work on Bahamian culture. A Bahamian native, her work examines complexities of living in a place shrouded in tourism’s ideal during the age of climate concerns. Her photography-based practice includes traditional documentary work and new media abstractions of written, oral, and archival histories. Tamika’s MFA|EDA thesis film “When the Lionfish Came” recently screened at International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) in January 2018.
Image from “When the Lionfish Came” by Tamika Galanis (2016).
Her work at the Library of Congress will center on the Alan Lomax Collection and other research in the American Folklife Center’s collections. “The Lomax expedition to The Bahamas in 1935,” Galanis explains, “provides us with a unique vantage point from which to view Bahamian folkway. The Lomax photographs and recordings from Cat Island and Andros Island gift us with a rare snapshot into the richness of folklife on lesser-visited islands in the Bahamian archipelago. As a native of the islands, I am eagerly looking forward to this residency which will afford me the time and resources to delve deeply into subject matter that I hold so dear and feel is key to my own documentary work and art.”
Image: “John Canoe (with guitar) and friends, New Bight, Cat Island, Bahamas, July 1935,” Photograph by Alan Lomax, Alan Lomax Collection, Library of Congress.
###
