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Days and Nights in the Wilderness by Lavar Munroe Lavar Munroe

Lavar Munroe

(b. Nassau, Bahamas 1982)
Lives and works between Washington, DC, and Nassau, Bahamas

Days and Nights in the Wilderness, 2015, mixed media on canvas

Collection of Dr. Robert B. Feldman

Employing a bright pastiche of graffiti imaginings and inspired by the rough neighborhoods of his native Nassau, Lavar Munroe works in a space between figure and abstraction, between sculpture and painting, creating a vibrant tapestry of layered heroic narratives. The title Days and Nights in the Wilderness draws from the parable of the Temptation of Christ, whereupon after being baptized Jesus spends 40 days and nights fasting in the Judean Desert to be tempted by Satan before beginning his ministry.  This idea of enduring suffering to come through whole and flow into a new journey is deposited within memory and personalization, from Munroe’s upbringing to the recounting of his father’s passing. In Munroe’s artwork, he places value on the narratives of the Bahamian peoples, aligning daily life with the same obstacles of storied heroes. The composition is bookended in the shape of great wings, capped by two caretaker figures wearing sterile gloves and medical shoe covers, each with masks, suggesting the prodigious parades and revelry of black lives during the island’s Junkanoo Festival. The canvas is cut, stitched, stapled, and sewn back together, a surreal display and reconstruction that the viewer must inspect. They carry a third figure—limp, yellowed, dotted with disease, and wasted—a gravitas nod to Christ’s passing and the Pieta imagery of Mary mourning her son, here a modern and black Pieta.