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There is a new art exhibition opening tomorrow at the Bliss Centre.
NICH along with the BTB have joined forces to bring a creative space to life as a photographic showcase.
Jomarie Lanza stopped by for a preview:
When you walk into the Belisle gallery there are dozens of colorful snapshots on display, each with its own story, emotion and uniqueness to it. The startup of the People and places exhibition, capturing culture and history, began a year ago, says Kim Vasquez. It first began when BTB took an interest in nurturing creative spaces.
Kim Vasquez, Director of Institute of Creative Arts
"I think in the middle of 2023 we had a meeting with our friends over at BTB out partners and they were embarking on enhancing some creative spaces. Just a couple weeks ago they launched, unveiled the refurbishment of constitution park and have designated it as a creative space because it has a stage and a pavilion for instance and in speaking with them they asked if there is a specific part of the bliss center that we would like to enhance and certainly as I said for the past few years this what we have been doing rebuilding the bliss center for performing arts getting programmes back here and so we looked at the Belsile gallery which we have tried to bring back more exhibits and more activities here and so we decided to work with them to do that. The project saw the installation which is a partnership between NICH and BTB as I said so NICH did some of the enhancement work most notably the air conditioning which will make the gallery much cooler and BTB provided some audio visual equipment a flatscreen TV a nice projector new easels for the gallery some display stands and they also sponsored this lovely exhibit here so that we could showcase the type of work and the type of exhibits we want to have in the future."
From there The institute of Creative Arts took over and began to search for distinctive works of art that can be put together on display, only this time they figured what better way to capture art in its truest form than through photography?
Kim Vasquez, Director of Institute of Creative Arts
"We decided because we are still celebrating our 20th anniversary at NICH that we wanted to look at some people and places. That's where the idea started not to only go and shoot places but also people, personalities and we decided to focus on a couple of our cultural sites and some within NICH, Cahal Pech, Xunantunich but also with our stakeholders our cultural stakeholders we visited for example the Maya museum in San Lazaro village and even our own houses of culture. So that we not only capture the sites and what is there to see but the people that do the cultural work that bring these sites to life."
There are up to 40 different photos on display, all taken from different events and scenes across Belize. A mixture and a balance between people, places and things that each photographer has an eye for.
Erick Lopez, Programme Officer, ICA
"We put out a social media call and we had photographers sign up you know and we had quite a number of them sign up but out of that number probably like five of them were really interested and that's what we worked with."
"We have our curator which is Me Gilvano Swasey you know once I got the shots then I passed it onto him and he was the one who then selected the images which will be displayed tomorrow yes."rideProvider€
The exhibition opens on Friday at 7:00.
