Lasting Radiance by Anina Major is the artist’s first solo presentation in New York City. The exhibition extends Major’s language of plaiting into design, bringing together functional and sculptural works that illuminate, reflect, and occupy a domestic interior while keeping the hand at the center of her practice. Lasting Radiance argues that brilliance persists even when it is briefly obscured: radiance can be reflected or eclipsed, but never diminished.
At the center of the exhibition is Tears of a Light Catcher, a large-scale suspended constellation of six woven ceramic light structures accompanied by hand-blown glass drops. Constructed from glazed and stained stoneware incorporating melted sea glass, the work recalls the crowded ceilings of Caribbean tourist marketplaces, where handcrafted objects gather overhead. Light passes through the woven structures and reflects across the bubbled, teardrop-shaped glass, casting an interplay of illumination and shadow. The work brings luminosity and vulnerability into conversation, suggesting that fragility and brilliance are not opposing conditions.
Positioned above the townhouse fireplace, Seen is a sculptural mirror whose glazed stoneware frame loosely follows the outline of New Providence, the Bahamian island where Major was born. The island’s contours also suggest the shape of an eye, bringing geography into dialogue with perception. While the eye directs the gaze outward, the mirror returns it, allowing the viewer to become both observer and subject. Within the contours of the island, the act of seeing oneself becomes inseparable from the question of where one sees from. The piece blurs the line between viewer and subject, and turns the everyday act of looking in a mirror into an act of appreciation.
Along the shelving, sculptures sit within individual alcoves, including Salt Water Tears, Poured at the Root, Black Sun, and Wounds into Silver. Arranged as a connected sequence, the works draw upon poetic imagery of tears, celestial bodies, transformation, and renewal. Their presentation invites viewers to encounter each sculpture individually while discovering relationships across the larger composition.
Major also cites Salvador Dalí’s Mae West Room as a reference for the exhibition’s playful relationship between sculpture and domestic space. Rather than treating the interior as a neutral setting, Lasting Radiance allows individual objects to enter into dialogue, creating an environment in which the boundaries between artwork, furnishing, and architecture become increasingly fluid.
Rooted in the Bahamian tradition of palm-leaf plaiting, a practice Major learned from her grandmother, straw weaver Saphora Newbold, her work translates inherited gestures into enduring sculptural forms. Through clay, glass, and light, Lasting Radiance carries this material language into new relationships with function. The exhibition proposes that objects need not relinquish their sculptural or conceptual significance to become part of everyday life. Instead, their proximity offers new possibilities for intimacy, recognition, and appreciation.
