Viewing Tavares Strachan: There Is Light Somewhere at Hayward Gallery

There Is Light Somewhere Bahamian-born conceptual artist Tavares Strachan’s radiant first institutional exhibition explores light, knowledge and human resilience through an array of captivating multimedia installations. Playing with light and shadow, neon sculptures that pulse with energy, intricate glassworks that capture the ephemeral beauty of light – it’s all meticulously crafted to play with the senses and challenge the stability of perception, asking poignant questions of the viewer.

There’s a vast new piece, Intergalactic Palace, which houses the sound and light installation, Sonic Encyclopaedia. It teems with cross-cultural energy: materially, it makes allusions to East African minerals and the surface of Mars, to traditional thatched structures found in Uganda. This exhibition demonstrates Strachan’s expressive and inexhaustive use of materials, often using them to blur borders and draw metaphors.

Drawing on the artist’s ongoing research into the intersections of art, science, and history. One of the highlights of the exhibition is the immersive installation Encyclopedia of Invisibility, an ambitious project that catalogues 17,000 entries of forgotten figures of history, shining a light on the invisible and the marginalized. Another standout piece is The Astronaut’s Diary, a tribute to Robert Henry Lawrence Jr., the first African-American astronaut. The installation’s luminous quality evokes a sense of wonder, paying homage to the spirit of human endeavor. Strachan shines light where it’s most needed.