Tavares Strachan

Born in Nassau, Bahamas, Tavares Strachan is an interdisciplinary artist. His innovative work is a fusion of art, science, history, and culture. Strachan received a BFA in Glass from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2003 and an MFA in Sculpture from Yale University in 2006. He became one to watch in the artistic community with his 2005 breakout piece, The Distance Between What We Have and What We Want, a four-and-a-half-ton block of ice he had shipped to the Bahamas via FedEx. When it arrived in his hometown, the block was kept on display at Strachan's former elementary school in a solar-powered refrigerated case made with the help of scientists from MIT. In 2004, he took on a four-year multimedia project he called Orthostatic Tolerance. The project, which combined photography, video and sculpture documenting Strachan’s experience at the Yuri Gagarin Training Center in Russia and the Bahamas Air and Space Exploration Center (BASEC), was shown in phases from 2008 to 2011. His 2010 piece, Invisible Diver, is a model of the human circulatory system made of hand-blown glass. This year, Strachan’s innovation was recognized at the highest level when he was chosen to receive one of the 2022 MacArthur Fellowships, an unrestricted grant awarded to artists who have shown exceptional creativity in their fields.