Over the past two decades, Strachan has formed a research-intensive practice that taps into art, science, history, and cultural critique with thematic investigations related to invisibility, displacement and loss. The artist’s primary interest is storytelling, with a focus on how an experience has an impact on the viewer. This is extended into his considerations of multidimensional performance and how working in multiple mediums collides.

The artist’s tapestries use text and subject matter from The Encyclopedia of Invisibility, weaving layered references together to explore an expanded visual enunciation of historical accounts, mapping out temporal and political connections. His paintings offer an intimate examination of cosmic influences, and highlight Strachan’s knowledge and fascination with astronomy. Work such as the Galaxy paintings chart space. They explore the idea that because of the infinite speed of light, when you gaze up into the night sky, you’re looking into the past, collapsing the way that we think about time. 

Tavares Strachan (b. 1979 in Nassau, Bahamas) references aeronautics, astronomy, deep-sea exploration, and extreme climatology to create monumental allegories through multiple mediums to communicate stories of cultural displacement, human aspiration, and mortal limitation. 

Beyond his The Encyclopaedia of Invisibility project, he is perhaps best known for The Distance Between What We Have and What We Want (Arctic Ice Project), 2004-06, in which he extracted a four and half tonne block of Arctic ice and shipped it to his birthplace in the Bahamas, where it was exhibited in a specially designed freezer chamber that was solar powered.

Strachan’s work has been acquired by several museum collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Bass, Miami; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; The Momentary at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville; Musée d’art contemporain, Lyon; The Queensland Art Gallery & Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane; and RISD Museum at Rhode Island School of Design, Providence.

Notable solo exhibitions include: You Belong Here/We Belong Here (Site Specific Installation), Barclays Center, Brooklyn, New York (2021); You Belong Here, Prospect 3. Biennial, New Orleans (2014); The Immeasurable Daydream, Biennale de Lyon, Lyon (2013); Polar Eclipse, The Bahamas National Pavilion 55th Venice Biennale, Venice (2013); Seen/Unseen, Undisclosed Exhibition, New York (2011); Orthostatic Tolerance: It Might Not Be Such a Bad Idea if I Never Went Home Again, MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge (2010). 

Group shows include: Forecast Form: Art in the Caribbean Diaspora, 1990s–Today, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2022); The Willfulness of Objects, The Bass Museum, Miami (2020); May You Live in Interesting Times, curated by Ralph Rugoff, The 58th International Art Exhibition, Venice Biennale 2019, Venice (2019); The Encyclopaedia of Invisibility, 54th Carnegie International, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburg (2018); Solidary & Solitary: The Joyner/ Giuffrida Collection, Ogden Museum of Southern Art, New Orleans (2017); and Bringing the World Into the World, Queens Museum, New York (2014).