Coming Home — Six Diaspora Artists at the Heart of FUZE Caribbean Art Fair 2026

From a St. Maarten-born artist exploring memory and the sea to a young Bahamian ceramicist revisiting her school days through sculpture, FUZE Caribbean Art Fair 2026 brought together artists whose work examines identity, belonging and the many

meanings of home.

Have you heard of the FUZE Art Fair, which became part of the Bahamas Culinary & Arts Festival in 2023? A place for artists to gather and explore; for art enthusiasts to discover, appreciate and support their work?

I didn’t until this year...shamedly.

Held October 21–25 at Baha Mar in Nassau, The Bahamas, Art Fair introduced me to a world of Caribbean creativity that deserves a closer look. Under the theme Coming Home, the fair brought together artists, galleries and cultural institutions from across the Caribbean and its diaspora, offering a window into the stories, ideas and experiences shaping contemporary Caribbean art.

"Coming Home speaks to our collective desire to reconnect—with our histories, our communities and one another," says John Cox, VP of Arts & Culture at The Baha Mar Resort. "This year's fair is an opportunity to celebrate the extraordinary creativity of the Caribbean while creating meaningful pathways for artists, collectors, institutions and audiences to engage with one another. FUZE is not only about presenting art; it is about building a stronger cultural ecosystem for the region and beyond."

What struck me most was the range of ways artists explored the idea of home. For some, it was about memory and the landscapes they carry with them. For others, it was about identity, history, belonging and the experiences that connect us to a place, even when we live elsewhere.

And for artists in the diaspora, coming home can mean something quite different. It can be a physical return to the islands, a reconnection with ancestral roots or an opportunity to share work shaped by a life lived between cultures.

That made the fair particularly interesting to me. As someone drawn to Caribbean stories and the people shaping the region's influence around the world, I found myself thinking about what it means to carry a piece of home with you, and how artists translate that experience into something others can see, feel and interpret for themselves.

Here are six artists whose work caught my attention.

Deborah Jack: Finding Stories in the Sea

Born in St. Maarten and based in New Jersey, multidisciplinary artist Deborah Jack explores memory, history, landscape and the sea through photography, video, sound, installation and text.

I find the connection between her practice and the Caribbean especially compelling. The sea is such a familiar part of island life, but it also holds complicated histories of migration, separation, connection and survival. Through her work, Jack invites us to look beyond the landscape itself and consider the stories it holds.

For those of us who have experienced the Caribbean as home, or who feel connected to it through family and heritage, that relationship with place can be deeply personal. The landscape becomes more than scenery; it becomes part of how we remember who we are.

Desmond Beach: Imagining What Comes Next

U.S.-based multidisciplinary artist Desmond Beach returned to FUZE as the recipient of the 2025 FUZE x SCOPE Residency Prize. Represented by Brooklyn's Richard Beavers Gallery at Booth F25, he presented a solo exhibition titled Field Notes from the Future, featuring digital painting, woven Jacquard and pieced fabric.

His presentation offered a reminder that Caribbean art is not simply about preserving the past. It is also about experimenting, imagining and creating new possibilities.

I like the idea of bringing digital and textile-based practices together, different materials and methods working side by side to tell a story. In a fair built around Coming Home, Beach's exhibition also raises an interesting question: How do we honor where we come from while making room for what has yet to be imagined?

His journey back to FUZE following the residency prize also highlights the importance of platforms that help artists build connections and take their work to new audiences.

Lavett Ballard: Piecing Together Identity

At Booth F28, Galerie Myrtis presented the work of U.S.-based mixed-media collage artist Lavett Ballard. Her wood and textile collages examine memory, identity and Black life, and the gallery received FUZE's Best Choice Award for Outstanding Booth Presentation.

There is something fitting about collage as a way of exploring identity. Fragments come together to form a larger picture, but each piece retains its own significance. Our identities can work in much the same way, shaped by family, history, culture and the experiences we gather along the way.

For Caribbean people and the diaspora, those pieces may come from different countries, generations and traditions. Some stories are passed down; others are discovered later in life. Together, they help us understand where we come from and how we see ourselves.

Ballard's work brings those ideas into visual form, making her presentation a natural fit for a fair asking audiences to think about memory, belonging and home.

Morel Doucet: Carrying Haitian Heritage into Contemporary Art

Originally from Haiti and based in Miami, multidisciplinary and ceramic artist Morel Doucet presented his work through the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), which participated in the fair as part of its bicentennial celebration.

Doucet's presence brought another diasporic perspective to FUZE, connecting Caribbean artistic practice with a major U.S. art and design institution.

What interests me about these connections is how they create opportunities for Caribbean stories to travel. An artist may draw from the culture and experiences of one place, develop a practice in another and share that work with audiences around the world. The journey does not necessarily dilute the connection to home; it can create new ways of expressing it.

Through artists such as Doucet, FUZE demonstrates how contemporary Caribbean art can move between cultural traditions, educational institutions and international audiences while retaining its distinctive perspectives.

April Bey: A Bahamian Voice on the International Stage

Bahamian-American visual artist April Bey, represented by Vielmetter Los Angeles and TERN Gallery, was another of the artists featured in FUZE's international and diasporic lineup.

Her participation reflects the growing connections between Caribbean artists and the galleries that introduce their work to wider audiences. For artists whose lives and identities span different places, those connections can help create space for more expansive conversations about culture, representation and belonging.

I am particularly interested in how artists interpret their cultural experiences rather than simply reproduce familiar images of the Caribbean. The region has so many stories to tell, and contemporary artists have the freedom to question, reimagine and push beyond the expected.

Bey's presence at FUZE was part of that wider conversation, bringing a Bahamian-American perspective into a gathering designed to showcase the breadth of Caribbean creativity.

Tyesha Tynes: Bringing a Piece of School Life Home

Of all the ways to interpret Coming Home, Bahamian ceramicist Tyesha Tynes offered one that feels especially personal.

A student at Haines College in Nebraska, Tynes returned to The Bahamas with a solo installation of six clay school-uniform sculptures, each without a body. The work grew out of her thesis project and reflects on the school years when identity, belonging and our sense of self begin to take shape.

Think about the school uniform for a moment. It is something many of us remember immediately: the way it looked, how it felt to wear it and the people we shared those years with. It represents a period of life when we are learning who we are, often while navigating the expectations of family, school and community.

Tynes takes that familiar object and gives it a different form. Without the bodies, the uniforms invite us to think about the individuals who might inhabit them; their personalities, ambitions, uncertainties and dreams. What appears ordinary at first becomes an opportunity to reflect on the experiences that shape us.

There is another layer to this presentation. Tynes is studying in the United States, but she brought this body of work back to The Bahamas, the place where the memories informing it took shape.

That is Coming Home in a very tangible sense: leaving, learning, developing your craft and returning with something that tells a story about where you began.

Earlier this year, Tynes also received an Honorable Mention in the Central Bank of The Bahamas Open Call Art Competition. It is an encouraging milestone for a young artist whose work demonstrates how personal experiences can become meaningful artistic statements.

Her installation also reminded me why it is important to pay attention to emerging artists. They are not simply the next generation of creatives; they are documenting the world as they experience it now, giving us new ways to understand ourselves and the communities we share.

Beyond The Art

One of the things I appreciate about gatherings like FUZE is the opportunity to encounter the Caribbean through perspectives beyond the familiar. The fair brings together artists, galleries, institutions and audiences, creating opportunities for discovery, conversation and support.

As part of the wider Bahamas Culinary & Arts Festival, FUZE also sits within a broader celebration of Caribbean culture. The festival's special guests included St. Lucian-born chef Nina Compton, whose career has carried Caribbean culinary influences to international audiences.

That connection between art, food and cultural identity feels important. Whether through a painting, a ceramic sculpture, a photograph or a dish, creative expression can preserve memories, communicate heritage and introduce people to places they may not yet know.

It can also challenge assumptions about the Caribbean, moving beyond the images that tend to dominate tourism marketing to reveal the people, ideas and creative practices that make the region what it is.

So, what does Coming Home mean?

After exploring the artists featured at FUZE Caribbean Art Fair 2026, I keep returning to that question.

For Deborah Jack, home can be found in the relationship between memory, history and landscape. Desmond Beach looks toward the future through digital and textile-based forms. Lavett Ballard brings fragments of identity and Black life together through collage. Morel Doucet connects Haitian heritage with contemporary multidisciplinary practice. April Bey brings a Bahamian-American perspective to the international art conversation. And Tyesha Tynes revisits the formative experience of growing up in The Bahamas through six sculptural school uniforms.

Their approaches are different, but they share a common thread: the desire to explore the experiences, histories and ideas that shape how we see ourselves and the world around us.

I didn't know about FUZE before this year, but discovering it has given me another reason to pay attention to the artists telling Caribbean stories in their own ways. Their work deserves to be seen, discussed, collected and supported, not only within the region, but wherever Caribbean people and their stories have traveled.

Perhaps that is the beauty of Coming Home. It does not have to mean returning to exactly where you started. Sometimes it means seeing a familiar place differently. Sometimes it means reconnecting with a part of yourself. And sometimes it means bringing what you have learned elsewhere back to the people and places that helped shape you.

For these artists, home is a story that continues to unfold. And I am glad I discovered another place where those stories are being told.