FEATURED STORY

“I think artists should build trap doors. You shouldn’t build a thing that you can’t escape from,” the artist Tavares Strachan says in his new Phaidon Contemporary Artists Series book. “The whole premise of why I became an artist was that I was sold this idea that you could do whatever you want to do.”
 
It’s an ideal Strachan has pursued throughout his life. Born in Nassau in 1979 and an attendee of the Rhode Island School of Design and later Yale University, Strachan has emerged as one of contemporary art’s most ambitious storytellers, moving effortlessly between sculpture, installation, painting, performance, and conceptual research, bringing overlooked figures and narratives into the cultural spotlight.

Strachan often looks back to help us look forward. At the heart of his work is a seemingly simple yet actually complex question: Who gets to be remembered? His fascination with exploration and discovery led him to create works inspired by people such as Alvin Ailey, Robert Henry Lawrence Jr. and Matthew Henson—figures whose contributions have largely existed in the margins of mainstream historical memory.