For five days this October, Baha Mar becomes more than a resort. It becomes a meeting place for artists, curators, galleries, museums, collectors, students, food lovers and people who may be walking into an art fair for the first time. FUZE Caribbean Art Fair returns to Nassau from October 21 through 25 as part of the fifth Bahamas Culinary & Arts Festival, and this year’s theme, Coming Home, asks a deceptively simple question: what does home mean when an artist’s work, education and audience can stretch across islands and around the world?

For WYBE, the answer begins in Freeport. Grand Bahama artists are not arriving at FUZE as a single style or a supporting act. They are bringing different generations, materials, personal histories and environmental concerns to one of the region’s most visible cultural gatherings. Join WYBE this week and follow their stories from home studios to the fair floor, while also making room for the food, wine, small businesses and conversations that turn the wider festival into an experience rather than a conventional exhibition.

More than an art fair

FUZE describes itself as a Caribbean gathering: more than 100 artists and 20 galleries, museums and cultural institutions connected to more than 10 Caribbean nations, the wider Americas, Africa and the United Kingdom. The exhibition tent is only the beginning. The published program includes artist talks, performances, workshops, portfolio reviews, films, institutional presentations and conversations about The Bahamas Pavillion at the Venice Biennale, cultural memory, art education and the work required to build creative institutions across the Caribbean.

That range matters for a young audience. You do not need to know the language of the art market before you arrive. Just begin with an open mind. Begin with a work that stops you, listen to the artist explain how it was made, see how their story changes your first impressions; participate in a drawing or painting session or follow the conversation into history, identity, conservation or business. FUZE offers several ways of relating to and understanding the same world.

Grand Bahama arrives in two distinct groups

Art Lucaya and Full Circle

At Art Lucaya’s booth F32, long-time friends and professional artists, Chantal EY Bethel and Claudette Dean reunite for Full Circle. Their artistic journeys began side by side in 1999 with a two-woman exhibition Between Friends. Twenty-seven years later, they return together with mature, individual voices linked by a shared interest in the feminine and in humanity’s responsibility to recognize the sacred within ourselves and the world around us.

The strength of the pairing is not sameness. Bethel and Dean view the world through distinct lenses, both from different countries living in the same community, allowing their story to unfold like a conversation between longtime peers. For Grand Bahama audiences who have watched both careers develop, Full Circle also carries a local history into a national and international setting.

The Grand Bahama Collective

The Grand Bahama Collective, exhibiting at booth F1, creates a second point of entry into the island’s art scene. Featuring Laurie Tuchel and Paula Boyd Farrington, in a group exhibition.

Tuchel’s practice is rooted in the rhythm of an active studio. During WYBE’s visit, she described a space where the light shifts as the day changes and where several paintings can develop at once. ‘Everything is a work in progress,’ she said. ‘I’m working on three things at one time.’ Her path is also a reminder that an artistic career does not have to begin on a conventional timetable. Starting her art career over 50, her work now moves among studio practice, gallery exhibitions, museum-linked programming and art fairs, expanding what a working artist from Grand Bahama can look like.

Farrington brings the Queen Conch into focus through large digital collage prints. Her series began with a familiar shell seen differently: not as background decoration or an unlimited source of food, but as a living Bahamian symbol whose future depends on conservation. She points to the Queen Conch Mariculture Centre at Conservation Cove in Grand Bahama and related community-based aquaculture work across The Bahamas and the Caribbean as sources of hope.

The works combine photographs with Farrington’s hand-painted acrylic abstracts, monoprints, fluid inks and digital tools. The result is playful and personality-filled, but the subject is urgent. Each FUZE work is a 48-by-48-inch digital collage printed on lightweight metal, designed for indoor or covered outdoor display and suited to humid climates. The material choice quietly connects the art to the environment in which it was imagined.

Artists and galleries to find on the floor

Grand Bahama is part of a much wider Caribbean network. FUZE’s official 2026 artist page currently names top from The Bahamas and Caribbean diaspora. Look for new work from artists: Yutavia George, Ojo Agi, Delton Barrett, Jason Bennett, Chantal Bethel, Dede Brown, Charles Campbell, Claudette Dean, Veronica Dorsett, Sonia Farmer, Keva Fawkes, Tyrone Ferguson, Tamika Galanis, Deborah Jack, Sue Katz, Jordanna Kelly, Kachelle Knowles, Nuris Lampe, Elvis Lopez, Lavar Munroe, Lynn Parotti, Matthew David Rahming, Antonius Roberts, Heino Schmid, Dave Smith, Edrin Symonette, Laurie Tuchel and Eddion Whyms.

The 2026 exhibitor list broadens this picture with powerhouse artists April Bey, Renée Cox, Savannah Baker, Victoria Ruiz, Desmond Beach, Dennis de Caires, Finn Modder, John Paul Saddleton, Junior Sealy, King Kesia, Lillian Blades, Thierry Lamare, Tyesha Tynes, Yesha Townsend and Shanna Hollis, among others. 

Participating galleries and platforms include ABIRAC Contemporary, Galerie Myrtis, Richard Beavers Gallery, Bermuda Art Collective, Ateliers ‘89, Bordón’s Studio, DépART, I.C.E. Gallery, Sixty2Sixty, TERN Gallery, Poinciana Paper Press, Pro Gallery at the University of The Bahamas and The Current at Baha Mar.

One presentation to watch is Sixty2Sixty’s return-home story with Bahamian artist and educator Yutavia George, whose journey has moved from The Bahamas to Paris and Chicago. Her work across drawing, painting, installation and performance examines identity, labor, changing environments, physical space and time. Her appearance gives the theme Coming Home a personal dimension: what does an artist bring back after building a practice elsewhere?

Museums and collections join the conversation

FUZE also places artists beside the institutions that preserve, interpret and circulate Caribbean art. The National Art Gallery of The Bahamas brings the national collection and its education and cultural-preservation mission into the fair. The National Gallery of Jamaica, the oldest and largest public art museum in the English-speaking Caribbean, adds a regional view of historical and contemporary practice. Pérez Art Museum Miami, is currently featuring a solo show by Bahamian artist Anina Major, connecting Caribbean work to a broader conversation across the Americas and the African diaspora.

The Central Bank of The Bahamas Art Gallery is another important presence. Since 1984, the Bank has supported Bahamian creativity through exhibitions, collecting and annual art competitions. Its place at FUZE helps make a point that is often missed: institutions do more than own art. At their best, they create pathways for emerging artists, document cultural change and help audiences understand why a national collection belongs to them, too.

Educational partners Maryland Institute College of Art and OCAD University extend the conversation into professional development, portfolio review and the ways creative education can remain connected to community.

A five day program built for curiosity

The following schedule highlights are drawn from FUZE’s published 2026 program. Times and access should be checked again before attending, particularly for workshops or ticketed sessions.

Where food art and small business meet

FUZE sits inside the larger Bahamas Culinary & Arts Festival, so the weekend does not ask visitors to choose between culture and hospitality. Saturday and Sunday bring the Culinary Expo and FUZE together with food and beverage, wine seminars, chef demonstrations, artisans and local vendors. Grand Bahama’s presence also extends into hospitality with a luxury wine presentation hosted by Freeport locals, Sea Gate Wines, whose Old World versus New World session gives a lesson on connection through more than one sensory experience.

For small businesses, the festival floor is its own kind of gallery. A beautifully plated dish, a locally made object, a bottle selected with care or a conversation at a booth can introduce an audience to the people building creative businesses across the islands. 

FUZE Caribbean Art Fair: October 21 to 25, 2026 at Baha Mar, Nassau. Official FUZE information and festival tickets