Growing up in the Bahamas as a kid, Anina Major watched from under the dining table as her grandmother’s feet pedaled on the sewing machine pedals, connecting the braided braids. Other women visited to learn about the weaving from the major's grandmother. “Even if she may not have transferred this knowledge directly to me, I still receive it indirectly,” Major told Observer.
Today, the Major preserves history and her family lineage by drawing inspiration from the items her grandmother made and sold in the straw market. Her striking ceramic works use the same technique her grandmother taught: Her woven sculptures are made of clay panels as if they were straw. The works are bipartite, complex and sophisticated, yet durable and seemingly flexible, and her practice is similar because it originates from nostalgia while pushing the art form into the future.
Not long ago, the high-end contemporary design library The Future Persect Select Select became the first winner of the Future Perfect Award, which offers $20,000 in unlimited funding, professional development and guidance, and exhibitions at the Future Perfect location in New York City. Major believes that it is not only her victory, but also for her previous artists and craftsmen. “I didn’t really think of this; it’s a series of people and communities,” she said, adding that honor is “to the community you see.”
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Major’s journey with ceramic weaving starts unexpectedly when a friend invites her to a community pottery class. Working with clay brings a sense of comfort – first a hobby, then a call. The initial curiosity quickly joined a lasting pursuit: she participated in the Rhode Island School of Design’s Ceramics MFA program to better understand what kind of manufacturer she wanted to be. This exploration brought her back to her grandmother, arriving in the summer when she watched craft souvenirs, baskets, hats, dolls and bags at the Bahamas tourism market. “That’s how I understand how something becomes three-dimensional,” she said.
At RISD, the Major is committed to learning how to weave the challenges of clay. When she retained the mechanism of knitting, she also revisited the tactile memory of watching her grandmother’s work – which lasted at the age of 13 long after her grandmother’s death. The flexibility of straw is transformed into the flexibility of clay rigidity requires ruthless experiments. She spent several years studying the chemical properties of the materials, providing clay with a way to move with the flexibility of palms. She first rolled the plate into thin strips, reflecting the techniques used by Bahamian women to harvest and prepare their palms. Once she successfully created the 2D braided surface, she was pushing and determined to bring work into three dimensions.
“I think I could have ended there, but I'm really struggling to get something that can accommodate that space; that's not enough,” Major said. She initially tried to mimic molds in the form of knitted, but felt insufficient – the fantasy failed to deliver on the labor and precision of hand-woven Bahamian women. Determined to capture the authenticity of the process, she has been perfecting her technology, drawing unexpected inspiration from the images found on beach balls, monuments and Bahamas postcards. When her ceramic sculptures began to take shape and retain their own structure, she reached what she called “Peekaboo” – intentionally opening, revealing the actual weaving and making it clear that it really looks like something that really looks like a weaving. There is no scam, no fax, only evidence of her hand. “A large part of my practice is to eliminate certain fantasies from the Caribbean, which are fantasies that make up some kind of image. I want to get more people into grit.”
Today, the Major’s creative practice is based on a profound commitment to preserve the Bahamian culture and the handicraft traditions it has produced. In a country where tourism accounts for 50% of GDP, her grandmother sells crafts in local markets to help her daughter’s education fund so that they can build a new future. When the major tried to understand her ancestors through the behavior of weaving, she found herself estimating the stratified meaning of these handmade objects, which is complex for visitors to those who make them. Artifacts that help shape her identity are also bound by the reality of service economy, making it impossible to separate cultural protection from the economic environment.
“I feel like I have the ability to take this approach and bring it to other dimensions in my creative career, which shows the impact it will have,” Major said. “It is weaving huge symbolism when we talk about resourcefulness and resilience.” She sees the current series of ceramic sculptures as the beginning, an evolving exercise, she continues to explore, question and understand her story. David Alhadeff, the future perfect founder, told Observer: “Anina is indeed using herself as a spirit and nature.”
Looking to the future, the Major hopes to explore weaving sculptures as a form of performance, viewing the act of production as a dance, a physical, intuitive process that may be another form of ancestral excavation. She said that at one time, the Bahamas had more than sixty completely different weaving styles. Today, there are only a few left. “The production of this work is in many ways a beautiful way to deal with loss. Not only one person's loss, but also an evolution of identity.”
Traditionally, weaving is usually a brief form – Strau and the palm breaks down, leaving little left. By converting these materials into clay, Major can permanently use impermanent spacecraft and preserve its complexity in a long-lasting medium. Her grandmother never called herself an artist, but for the Major, she was undoubtedly. “It's beautiful to think about how I redefine the work of these women and add another layer of understanding: it's a work of art,” Med concluded.
