Death of Ajax
Death of Ajax deals with a particular point in Caymanian history. In this work, twin wooden panels frame two halves of a blueprint for the Ajax, a traditional Cayman Brac catboat that was used to hunt turtles. Below each half are five cast glass turtle skulls. Given the proximity of both skeletons — the framework of the boat and the skull of the sea turtle — we are left to question the implications behind “death” in the title. It seems the artist is both lamenting the passing of this vessel as a particularly Caymanian piece of heritage and the passing of the marine resource that it was invented to capture. The lack of any satisfying narrative in this work only underscores the sense of loss when a culture (or environment) fades into the past.
About the Artist
Davin Ebanks
b. 1975
Born in Grand Cayman, Davin Ebanks acquired a BA in Graphic Design at Anderson University, Indiana, and an MFA in Glass Sculpture at Kent State University, Ohio. He has been artist-in-residence at Jacksonville University and Anderson University, and has taught at New York’s Urban Glass (the first and largest glass studio in the United States) at Kent State University and at Salisbury University. He won The McCoy Prize for Fine Craft in 2003 and NGCI’s 2012 Public Sculpture competition. Ebanks was one of four Caymanian artists to be recognized in A-Z of Caribbean Art (Robert & Christopher Publishers: 2019), a landmark survey of contemporary art from the Caribbean region and its diaspora. His work is included in the permanent collections of NGCI and the Cayman Islands National Museum, and has been displayed at the Glass Art Society’s Annual Conference and in numerous NGCI exhibitions, including: Blue Meridian (solo show, 2010–11), The Persistence of Memory (2011), Luminescent Forms (2014), tIDal Shift: Explorations of Identity in Contemporary Caymanian Art (2015), All Access (2015), Upon the Seas (2017), Revive: Contemporary Caymanian Craft (2017), Cross Currents – 1st Cayman Islands Biennial (2019), Saltwater in Their Veins (2020) and The People’s Collection: A 25-Year Cultural Legacy (2022).
