Lavar Munroe However Long the Night, the Dawn Will Break 

Production | Exhibition Grant

With However Long the Night, the Dawn Will Break, Lavar Munroe reimagines unrealized sketches from the notebooks of the late artist John Beadle, enacting a posthumous collaboration. The work serves as a spiritual and material invocation of Beadle, honoring his legacy while positioning Bahamian art within a global discourse. Central to the project is the deconstruction of Junkanoo costumes from Boxing Day (2025) and New Year’s Day (2026) parades, dismantled and shipped to Venice. The materials’ prior life, cultural resonance, and transformation—from secrecy to spectacle to discard—inform both form and process. Constructed on-site over several weeks, the installation embodies Bahamian labor, memory, and national identity. The artist’s approach to the project is guide by the intention to pay homage to Beadle, as well as the thousands of Bahamian hands that labored in secret for months to produce the Junkanoo costumes that embody the sculpture. These collective acts of making—rooted in discipline, ritual, and shared cultural knowledge—form the conceptual and ethical foundation of the work.

Following the Venice Biennale, the work will return to Nassau for exhibition at the National Art Gallery of The Bahamas.