Jodi Minnis Rolle: Vexing the Bahamian Hospitality Narrative
Jodi Minnis Rolle, Everybody’s Business (2024), mixed media installation, dimensions variable. Currently on view at the National Art Gallery of The Bahamas. Image courtesy of Jackson Petit.
A Bahamian straw market stall, sparse by way of wares and shrouded in blue tarpaulin, stands tall and imposing, painted in red (a warning, an alert), and reminiscent of a shrine as an omen of tourism in the nation. The blue tarp in Everybody’s Business (2024) references the cycles of construction and destruction common in the region, reflecting the environmental and economic challenges faced by small island states in the Caribbean hurricane belt. Bahamian multidisciplinary artist Jodi Minnis Rolle, concerned with intimacy and care at the heart of her practice, turns to the materiality of the landscape to investigate, agitate, and critique tourism and its colonial legacies in the Caribbean contemporary.
Minnis Rolle is no stranger to tourism. In addition to her art practice, she works as a curator and gallery manager at TERN Gallery in Nassau, located on the grounds of a boutique hotel. The Bahamas, in particular its capital, Nassau, is one of the proverbial birthplaces of tourism as an industry in the Caribbean. Tourism isn’t just something Bahamians engage in for a living. Much of the semiotics and identifiers associated with the culture come deeply intertwined with the history of tourism in The Bahamas itself. The conception of the nation as a picturesque destination is so embedded in the local consciousness that the line between what is tourism product and what is culture becomes troublingly blurry. She remains vocal about the myriad ways that tourism has had a profound influence on Bahamian identity and self-understanding since the industry’s inception.
Jodi Minnis Rolle, Solange has a song about this (2023), monotype print on mulberry paper and collage, 14 x 11 inches.
