Image: Pérez Art Museum Miami
For her project at PAMM, Anina Major presents an installation featuring towering woven clay sculptures, bottle trees and a path of crushed conch shells. These materials ground the installation in the cultural and ecological history of the Caribbean.
Major hand-weaves clay to resemble palm-leaf plaiting, transforming a tradition rooted in softness and impermanence into one of permanence and reverence. The shift from organic fiber to fired earth honors the labor, knowledge and lineage embedded in Bahamian craft, elements often overlooked or commodified within the tourism economy.
Bahamian-born artist Anina Major, born in 1981 in Nassau, Bahamas, and now living in New York, works at the intersection of ceramics, sculpture and installation. Her practice reflects the tension between the Bahamas’ image as a marketed paradise and the undervalued cultural traditions that define its identity.
The installation includes ‘Water Tower’ (2024), from the museum’s collection. ‘Anina Major: The Sacred Mangrove’ is organized by Jennifer Inacio, a PAMM curator.
The opening event features a conversation with Major and PAMM Curator Jennifer Inacio exploring how Major translates ancestral weaving practices into ceramic sculptures and installations.
