FUZE Caribbean 26 - Blue Curry | TERN Gallery

Welcome to the shopFor this exhibition, Bahamian artist Blue Curry transforms the art-fair booth into a tongue-in-cheek tourist shop stocked with limited-edition merchandise that turns the language, imagery, and clichés of Caribbean tourism back on itself. The joke is intentional—and particularly pointed here: the fair takes place inside Baha Mar, one of Nassau’s major resort developments.Curry’s signature Over Tourism wallpaper, a phrase that operates on more than one level. For those who live in islands shaped by tourism, we are quite literally over it. The merchandise continues the gag with stickers bearing slogans such as “Paradise LOL,” “Fully Discovered,” “Tourist Trapped,” and “Feelin’ Irate, Mon.” The latter riffs on the ubiquitous tourist-shop appropriation of Jamaican patois—feelin’ irie—while pointing to an uncomfortable truth: Bahamians do not actually speak this way, even as versions of this manufactured Caribbean vernacular are sold back to visitors as souvenirs.