BUILDINGS ARE PEOPLE TOO

An exhibition by
Piaget Moss & Veronica Dorsett
The Glass Bridge
in the Melia Nassau Beach,
Nassau, The Bahamas
July 31 2014
WHAT WE TALK ABOUT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT PARADISE
F
or all of its perceived dividends, paradise is not without its complexities. For
both native and visitor, paradise demands a particular dissociation from its
colonial implications and careful construction. In a place like The Bahamas,
where six million visitors per year contribute to make tourism the number one
industry in the archipelago, the business of paradise is one of survival, punctuated by
moments of glory and downfall as a revolving door of hotels and resorts repackage
their particular recipe for tropical success.
The $3.5 billion single-phase resort development Baha Mar offers something
different both in its construction and in its projected offerings once the hotel is
completed and opens to the public at the end of this year. Every hotel is a product of
its time and Baha Mar demonstrates a contemporary understanding of the importance
of cultural identity in a globalized world by holding a love for Bahamian culture at its
core. It might just be the right recWipe for success, at last. Only time will tell. For now,
Bahamians alternate between disconnected rapt and careful hopefulness as they eye
the development now in its nal stages.
Bahamians know, after all, that the business of paradise is not for the faint of heart.
They have seen their share of hotels rise out of the limestone, glitter for a short while,
then dull and crumble. Theyve seen giants lost to re like the great Emerald Beach
Hotel; theyve seen once-saviors reduced to rubble, like the demolished Fort Montagu
Beach Hotel; and theyve seen re-brand after re-brand as hotels changed hands like
casino chips, as was the fate of the developments lining the Cable Beach strip.
Bahamian artists Piaget Moss and Veronica Dorsett may be too young to have
witnessed a full lifecycle of a hotel, but hailing from Grand Bahama, with its once-
glamorous International Bazaar and its own concrete ghosts, they know well how the
whims of the hospitality industry can greatly affect Bahamian communities.That is
perhaps why in their rst exhibition together, Buildings Are People Too, these
emerging artists tune into the visible and invisible anxieties of hotel construction,
particularly through the lens of Baha Mar.
With funding from the China Import-Export bank and manual labor provided by
several thousand Chinese workers from the general contractor, China State
Construction Engineering Corporation, Baha Mar is the rst single-phase resort
development in The Bahamas built through a collaboration with China. This is a
historical moment in Bahamian history, but one not without its own apprehensions.
Reactions seem to fall into two categories: xenophobic confrontations rising out of
cultural stereotypes and postcolonial fears, or an unwillingness to acknowledge the
uncomfortable reality of thousands of low-wage workers laboring day and night in
a foreign country specically to lift such an ambitious project off the ground come
December. Until only recently, if one wanted to feel an acute sense of dissociation, one
could drive past the glittering in-progress site of four luxurious hotels and spot the
spartan barracks full of Chinese workers at their feet.
What is it about this particular project and its cultural baggage that provokes such a
response? Its not as if foreign and Bahamian parties have never built developments
together in the past. Is it that, despite $750 million bid out in contracts to Bahamian
companies, despite the promise of a New Riviera with authentic Bahamian culture
driving its guest experience, we still feel left out of this process? Or is it the fact that the
inux of foreign assistance lies particularly in thousands of low-wage workers, making
us question our place on the ladder used to construct paradise?
Bahamians have always managed the strange dissociation between the projection of
themselves and the reality of themselves. They know the line is hair-thin between work
and lifestyle when it comes to the business of paradise. Do Bahamians feel an
exclusive right to their collective tropical experience? So what does it mean to think
about the uncomfortable fact that at this very moment, thousands of Chinese workers
work, eat, sleep and breathe to build a Bahamian dream?
After all, Bahamians certainly know what the name of the exhibition teaches us: hotels
are people, too. Like everything constructed by human hands, they reect our
humanitythey shine, they have fteen minutes of fame, they have accidents, they
age, they go through mid-life crises, they re-invent themselves, they struggle, they have
face-lifts, they grow, they shrink, they die.
We should be indifferent to this cycle, but we arent. We worked to build these hotels,
we worked to keep them alive, and we bore witness to their journey into obscurity. We
poured their foundation, we stacked their bricks. We uffed their pillows, we
lifeguarded their pools. We trimmed their bougainvillea hedges and perfect coconut
palms. We stood at check-in counters, restaurant tables, nightclub doorways, bars.
We ran our ngers along the hallway walls in back-of-house. We lit their stages and
performed on their stages. We smiled at guests and we didnt smile at guests because
even in paradise we have good days and bad days. Sometimes we loved it, and
sometimes we didnt because paradise is hard to keep up 365 days a year. Some-
times we believed in it, too, the promise of paradise. Sometimes it felt like something
that belonged to us. Often it didnt.
Even if we have never worked in one, hotels share with us some of our most dening
memories: rst dates listening to a band play high up in the majestic silk cotton trees at
the Royal Victoria Hotel; working up a sweat to Bahamian performers at the Nassau
Beach Hotel; wedding photographs under the poinciana trees in the Cable Beach Strip
gardens; prom parades through the Hiltons welcome arch to a crowd of onlookers; a
dance recital at the Rainforest Theatre in the Crystal Palace; graduation in the
1
REN (detail)
Piaget Moss
Mixed Media
11.5 x 11
2014
2
LASTING IMPRESSIONS
Piaget Moss
Digital Photograph
2014
3
SCREWED (detail)
Veronica Dorsett
Mixed Media
11 x 9
2014
4
REALIGNMENT
Veronica Dorsett
Mixed Media
12 x 10
2014
1
2
4 3
NEW GROUNDS
Piaget Moss
Mixed media on canvas
41 x 52in
2014
Radisson ballroom; a weekend staycation with your sweetheart at Sandals;
conquering childhood fears at the gravity-defying Leap of Faith slide in Atlantis.
When hotels go, we mourn. The day that the Montagu Beach Hotel hit the ground in
a cloud of decades-old dust, Bahamians gathered in some makeshift wake on nearby
docks and boats to watch it fall and take with it some of the moments they hold dear,
and some moments they dont, too, because when you build your lives around hotels,
you do it for better or for worse. How then can anyone else know what we have
knownthe beautiful and terrible duty of gatekeepers of paradise?

To prepare for Buildings Are People Too, Piaget Moss and Veronica Dorsett, as
Baha Mars rst artists-in-residence, both lived and worked in the Crystal Palace Train-
ing Hotel (the Wyndham Nassau Resort in its last reincarnation), which Bahamians
once knew as the bizarre but glamorous Crystal Palace. The Crystal Palace Training
Hotels fate is all but sealed as it is dwarfed by Baha Mars four large hotels, and also
anked by what will eventually become the fth member of the Baha Mar family, the
Melia Nassau Beach Hotel, its name a homage to the beloved Nassau Beach Hotel
which once stoof in its place. For now, the Crystal Palace Training Hotel presents a
shifting and anxious space as an annex to the home stretch of Baha Mars develop-
ment. The Current art studio occupies a space that once held a bar, and The Current
ofces have settled into an old conference room until the Baha Mar development is
complete. Even the Chinese workers have moved from their barracks to the empty
rooms in a closed tower at the Crystal Palace Training Hotel, sharing their living space
with Bahamians working in makeshift ofces to develop Baha Mar.
This offered the pair of artists an inside look at resort development. Witnessing the
body of the hotel once known as the glamorous Crystal Palace undergo partitions and
rewiring to make room for temporary ofces; peering into guest rooms gutted of hun-
dreds of desks and chairs and tables, stacked up in the ballroom as a makeshift ware-
house; spying the laundry of Chinese workers hanging out to dry along the balconies
of a once-rainbow-lit faade that has paled to a dirty beige; counting the cigarette
butts on carpets; noticing that the site mud on stilled escalators and windows thick with
dust and salt are never cleared away ---- all of this is a strange and prolonged exercise
in mourning. It informs our careful hope for future hospitality developments. For if this
is the peculiar fate of a hotel we once hinged our dreams upon not thirty years ago,
what will we be doing thirty years from now?
What will people think, centuries from now, uncovering these lives lived through
concrete giants? When the presence of each guest is systematically cleaned from
every sheet, every doorknob, every piece of silverware, every drop of drained
pool water, and when the hands that have heaved bricks and stirred pots and
shaken hands and folded sheets then fold themselves, what will be left to tell the
archeologists of the future about the lives we lived? Will our presence, like the
presence of these thousands of Chinese workers at this present moment, evaporate
when the job is done? Or is the truth just that the job of paradise is never truly done?
Piaget and Veronica have taken on the role of modern-day archeologists, mining
the present moment and tryingthrough piecing together unearthed fragments of
humanity and hardwareto place their ngers on the collective pulse of this anxiety.
What exactly does our complex relationship to the current situation at Baha Mar say
about our own awareness of the hospitality industry?
Piaget Moss attempts to answer this question in the most direct of ways: communica-
tion. For the better part of this past year, Piaget has been spending time on site
speaking with these Chinese workers and photographing their portraits. She had
wonderedas perhaps many Bahamians have at some point or anotherwhat drove
the workers to take up posts in The Bahamas, the lives they lived and left at home, or
else the lives they experience as nomads building projects around the world. Armed
with a hardhat, a camera, and basic Mandarin picked up in a class at the College
of The Bahamas, Piaget spent days on site tuning into the daily lives of the Chinese
workers building the New Bahamian Riviera.
The resulting portraits capture immense and astounding lives that are at once so
different from our own yet also completely relatable: the desire to build a better life for
their family, the belief in a shared national goal, good days and bad days. Piaget
remembers the story behind every portrait: which worker, which hotel, which oor,
how their faces changed when they spoke of home, their self-conscious straightening
of posture, hiding of crooked teeth, and broadness of smile, how they, too, often feel
the crushing weight of responsibility for the developments success, leaving us to
wonder iffor they never say so directlythey, too, privately resent it at times.
In her portrait series for Buildings Are People Too, Piaget distorts these images
through photo transfers onto canvas, a method the young artist has adopted as her
signature over the past year. Initially interested in drawing the human body, Piaget be-
gan deconstructing the gure through photo transfer and digital collage, letting these
bodies dissolve into botanicals as a means to explore social experiences of race,
gender, culture and history. These transfers of her Chinese worker portraits obscure
the delicate and intimate clarity of her original photographs with all of their shifts in
posture and emotion, but whether alone or paired with salvaged objects from the con-
struction site, the portraits hold vulnerable and honest confrontations with the viewer.
Herein, then, lies their strength, and their beauty: Piaget has successfully deconstruct-
ed buildings themselves without even using an image of the development. Instead,
she gave some of the thousands of Chinese workersfaceless in our collective
LEAD, FOLLOW, REPEAT
Veronica Dorsett
Mixed Media
30 X 42
2014
RENOWN (detail)
Veronica Dorsett
Mixed Media
14 x 10
2014
HANDMADE
Piaget Moss
Wood and Nails
Varied Dimensions
2014
national consciousnessa space to exist and stare back, forcing viewers to
confront the reality of their existence and move past their xenophobic mythologies to
a shared humanity. After all, in front of a camera, at our most vulnerable, we are all
face the same question: How would you like to be remembered?
If they prefer not to confront the portraits, viewers are still haunted by the
undeniable presence of other-ness in Piagets body of work. Her signier of choice is
a single pair of dirty construction gloves she picked up on one of her many rounds
on site, which she photo transfers over and over into fans and layers of circles, or a
series of plaster-cast hands. The obsessive repetition of these acts hum with anxiety.
Viewers may wonder if the paper or sculpture will buckle under the weight of so
many crowded anonymous souls.
In her painting New Grounds, smudged again with presence of construction
gloves, Piaget approached a China Construction America employee, named Jerry,
to directly translate the phrase of the title into Mandarin script and invited him to
directly apply it to her canvas. This piece, juxtaposing the nameless with the
identied, best demonstrates the great courage and the yet utter hopelessness of her
mission the best: the desire to record and pay tribute to thousands of people, and
the unsettling reality of its impossibility.
Veronica Dorsett, on the other hand, comes at this thesis with hardware. Whereas
Piaget deconstructs, Veronica departsher Baha Mar signiers, such as the
ubiquitous yellow hard hat used by construction workers, loosely tie her subject
matter to the present issue at hand, while extra ourishes create an alternate
universe of sorts that we soon recognise as manifestations of paradise. In the spare,
clean world of her multi-media pieces, construction workers dabble in the glamor of
high fashion; yellow hard hats dense with screws and black string become unsettling
phrenology maps; and a myriad of spray-painted legs in hot-pink construction boots
march onwardsin what direction, we are unsure, except for away from ustheir
stenciled nature, like her half-shadowed hard-hatted gures, preferring the anony-
mous existence to the autonomous one.
Living in Grand Bahama, where she cannot witness the Baha Mar development in
her everyday commute coming to life like some glorious gestation, Veronica oper-
ates from a detached space. Her resulting body of work takes the surface snippets
of Baha Mars grandeur and pushes them into the sensational realm of wonderland,
fullling the ashy and grotesque promises of paradise where people and buildings
come together in two-for-one specials. There exists little reconciliation here, except
for a few cobbled together sculptural pieces where salvaged wood from the site
form two irregular halves of a circle or triangle. But even that calls attention to the
impossible act of adopting someone elses child.
EXCHANGES
Piaget Moss
Mixed Media
18 x 44
2014
For Veronica, making art is a mental battle as much as a creative one. Working and
reworking a piece to get at the very core of it all results in clean and open nal con-
structions whose simplicity belie their deep connotations. If they look closely, viewers
may see, in the dense black canvas of Jerry, the ghost of her stenciled marching
construction boots. Buried rst beneath a layer of soft pastels and then under a heavy
swath of black, Veronica performed her archaeological duties in reverse, removing all
signs of humanity, feeding our anxieties of a life lived fullling the dreams of a globe
hungry for an easy understanding of tropical life.
After Veronica nished painting the canvas black, she ripped it in half. When she
ripped it in half, she did not nd the pastel layer underneath, or the footprints deeper
still. Its just a gap. What we talk about when we talk about paradisewhen we talk
about buildings and peopleis this gap: between one culture and another culture,
between our collective dream and our individual needs, between the people who
work in the hotel and people who visit the hotel, between an acknowledged individual
and a faceless mass, between the moment a hotel is born and the moment it dies.
How do you ll that gap? What lies between the very excitement of it all, and the
very dread of it all, which eventually feels one and the same? What if we fail? More
importantly, more fearfullywhat if we succeed? What new standard, what cultural
precedent, has this development solidied for our nation? And will it be enough? Will
it ever be enough?
As its title suggests, the same China Construction America employee, Jerry, who
helped Piaget complete New Grounds with his own handwriting, also contributed
to Veronicas work. Given free reign by Veronica to write what he pleased upon this
black canvasa burial ground of sortsJerry stood in silent contemplation for fteen
minutes. He picked up a plaster ngerbroken off from one of Piagets myriad cast
handsand scrawled a shiny Baha Mar slogan, One Team, One Dream in the top
center half, the nger leaving chalky white in its wake. Then, he framed it in
Mandarin: Two beautiful girls asked me to write something, but I dont know what to
say. A pause. Then, Artists need ideas like construction needs workers.
As the archaeologists who found hand-picked owers fossilized around bodies in
ancient burial grounds, footprints unearthed from lands thought to be swallowed by
volcanic disaster, and ngerprints smudged into cave paintings will remind us: not
all is lost. It never is. The workers in their boots march on to the next destination, the
hotel opens its doors. Almost all of us will be faceless. What remains is accident, good
fortune, or calculation: vacation postcards from long demolished buildings, a pair of
discarded gloves dusted with construction dirt, a worn architectural drawing of a play-
ground in paradise, distorted portraits of bad teeth, layers and layers of paint, and
Jerry, the unlikely philosopher, making modern day cave paintings with two young
Bahamian artists, trying to bridge the gap.
JERRY
Veronica Dorsett
Mixed Media
4 x 9
BML Collection
2014
Born on the island of Grand Bahama,
Veronica is primarily an installation art-
ist with a keen interest in sculptural and
mixed media works. She recently grad-
uated from The College of The Baha-
mas in Nassau, New Providence with
an AA in Art and plans to pursue a BFA
in sculpture in 2014.
Dorsett was awarded the 2012 Popop-
studios ICVA Junior Residency Prize as
well as the 2013 National Merit Schol-
arship Grant and was a resident artist
at the Ateliers89 Caribbean Linked II
in Oranjestad, Aruba, August 2013.
Her works have been featured in nu-
merous galleries across the Bahamas
such as the National Art Gallery of The
Bahamas, Popopstudios ICVA and The
Grand Gallery, among others.
Upon the genesis of my Baha Mar ex-
perience, I found a keen interest in the
stereotypes that exist around the world
of construction and foreigners; and how
our economy and mentalities are affect-
ed by this combination. Limited interac-
tions gave me --- for lack of a better term
--- a distant relationship with the workers,
which allowed me to take on the per-
spectives of any casual onlooker, thus
generating works that could essentially
fulll the typical labels of the Baha
Mar Chinese workers. From my dis-
tance, their worn-down boots and bright
neon yellow hats created a monotonous
visual repitition, lacking any true identity
or human characteristics.
VERONICA DORSETT
The strength of this perception al-
lowed me to focus more on the ob-
jects that were left behind by the
workers, like hard hats, gloves,
boots, even scrap pieces of paper
that they wrote on. All of these ob-
jects somehow became a glowing
light of history and a lasting trade-
mark of the souls that would have
literally built Baha Mar from the
ground up. It is my aim to glorify
these objects that will remain once
the workers have left and docu-
ment their journey through discard-
ed materials in order to dignify and
praise the gift that they will leave
behind in the Bahamas.
Originally from Freeport, The Bahamas,
Piaget was born in April 1994. After grad-
uating high school in 2011, she moved to
Nassau, New Providence in 2012 where
she is presently pursuing an AA in Art at
The College of The Bahamas. As an emerg-
ing contemporary artist, she seeks connec-
tions with other creative minds throughout
the Caribbean diaspora and the global art
community. Moss interests lie in projecting
ideas of personal identity and human emo-
tion, and social and cultural construction.
She has participated in numerous shows,
including the third annual All-star Amateur
Art Exhibition at the National Art Gallery
of The Bahamas (Nassau, The Bahamas,
2013), Color of Harmony, the Art De-
partments End of Year Exhibition at The
College of The Bahamas (Nassau, The
Bahamas, 2013), Independent Artists, The
Grand Gallery (Freeport, The Bahamas,
2013), The New New, Popopstudios ICVA
(Nassau, The Bahamas), and Transform-
ing Spaces 2014 After the Flood, Liquid
Courage Gallery (Nassau, The Bahamas,
2014).
Each day, Baha Mar is building a history
and I am grateful to have been given the
opportunity to contribute to its construction.
PIAGET MOSS

Our experience during this Baha Mar residency has been a lasting and pivotal
moment in our careers as young artists and one that we will not soon forget. We
would like to extend heartfelt thanks to John Cox, and his entire Baha Mar Team at
The Current, including Sonia Farmer, Khia Poitier, Cydne Coleby, Richardo Barrett
and their interns Alecia Munnings, Jacob Miller, Kelly Taylor, and Berchadette
Moss for their amazing support and time. They are truly a group of gifted people
who have the capacity to make magic happen in the months and years to come at
Baha Mar.
THANK YOU
THE GLASS BRIDGE
Located in a dynamic hallway space at The Melia, The Glass Bridge presents a
look at creative practices within the contemporary art landscape. Focusing on
project-based exhibitions by emerging artists, this gallery offers candid
examinations of creative ebb and ow while also providing a signicant platform
for up-and-coming artists to present their work to a wider global audience.
THE CURRENT
Electrifying the intersection between the Baha Mar brand and the Bahamian art
community, The Current denes and presents dynamic art programming at the
luxury resort. This curatorial art team acts as a hub for the various moments of art
across the campusincluding three art galleriescreating a compelling
experience of Bahamian visual culture for both guests and Bahamians alike.
For more, email art@bahamar.com and like us on Facebook at
facebook.com/thecurrentart.
MELI NASSAU BEACH
Meli Nassau Beach is located on a 1,000 foot stretch of white sand along Nassaus
Cable Beach. The propertys 694 guestrooms and 32 suites offer unsurpassable views
of the Atlantic Ocean as well as an array of on-site activities and amenities including
four dining venues and a meeting space of more than 25,000-square-feet. Renova-
tions are currently underway without any interruption to the on-site guest experience.
Meli Hotels & Resorts
Meli Hotels & Resorts brand is the Groups city and resort hotels brand that combine
a mixture of stunning yet functional facilities within preferred business and leisure
destinations, such as Meli Kuala Lumpur Malaysia, Meli Jardim Europa - Sao
Paolo, Meli Caribe Tropical - Dominican Republic, Meli Barcelona - Spain, Meli
Vendome - Paris, Meli Whitehouse - London and Meli Zanzibar - Tanzania. The
brand is designed to offer the ve senses a fresh and innovative experience through
igniting the Spanish tradition of excellence in hospitality. All hotels pay close attention
to sensory design coupled with fresh and welcoming decorations, balancing aesthetics
and design functionality. Meli hotels feature a VIP experience called The Level that
offers a private lounge with open bar, exclusive room accommodations, special in
room amenities and the nest service. www.melia-hotels.com
BAHA MAR
Baha Mar, opening December 2014, is set on 3,000 feet of white-sand beach just
ten minutes from Nassaus newly expanded Lynden Pindling International Airport.
This must-visit destination will feature an elite collection of hotel brands with gam-
ing, entertainment, private residences, shopping and natural attractions that reect
an authentic Bahamian experience. The Baha Mar Casino & Hotel, with 1,000
rooms, is the centerpiece of the resort, and includes a 100,000-square-foot Las Ve-
gas-style casino the largest in the Caribbean region. Baha Mar will also include
a 700-room Grand Hyatt at Baha Mar, a 300-room SLS LUX at Baha Mar, and a
200-room Rosewood at Baha Mar. Upon completion of extensive renovations, the
694-room Meli Nassau Beach will join Baha Mar and complete the extraordi-
nary accommodations at the luxury resort.
Amenities will include the 18-hole, 72-par championship Jack Nicklaus Signature
Golf Course at Baha Mar; 200,000 square feet of combined, exible, state-of-the-
art convention facilities including a 2,000-seat performing arts center and an art
gallery with the largest curated collection of Bahamian art in The Bahamas; more
than 30 restaurants and bars; two spas, including the 30,000-square-foot destina-
tion spa, ESPA at Baha Mar; designer retail boutiques and 20 acres of exquisitely
landscaped beach and pool experiences, including a beachfront sanctuary with
native Bahamian ora and fauna.
For more information, please visit www.bahamar.com.
Buildings Are People Too is a book written, designed, printed and bound by The
Current, the curatorial art team at Baha Mar, for Current Books, in a limited edition
of 100 copies, in July 2014.

Buildings Are People Too was an exhibition of artwork by Piaget Moss and
Veronica Dorsett on display at The Glass Bridge in the Melia Nassau Beach during
August and September 2014. The exhibition was a culmination of a month-long
residency in July 2014 at The Current art studio at Baha Mar.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Paradise was written by Sonia Farmer.
Catalogue design is by Khia Poitier and Cydne Coleby. The letterpress-printed
covers were designed and hand-printed by Sonia Farmer and Orchid Burnside at
Poinciana Paper Press and the books were hand bound by The Current and their
interns in a limited edition of 100.

Book Current Books
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