Schmid, Heino

A Bahamian with German heritage, Heino Schmid (born 1976, Nassau, Bahamas) is a versatile artist who uses a variety of mediums—including painting, drawing, collage, film and photography—to drive his creative process of visual deconstruction and cultural analysis.

In 1998 Schmid received his Associate's Degree in Art from The College of The Bahamas, studying under Antonius Robert's tutelage. Schmid then went on to pursue a double major in painting and photography at the Savannah College of Art and Design. Finding photography an exciting challenge as well as a fitting medium with which to make ‘found compositions’, he eventually dropped the painting major, graduating with a BFA in Photography from the institution in 2003.

Returning home to The Bahamas, Schmid took on a curatorial assistant position at the newly formed National Art Gallery of The Bahamas. Meanwhile, he spent two years fostering a creative kinship with such like-minded artists as John Cox, Jason Bennet, Toby Lunn and Blue Curry, whose creative practices and exhibitions at Popopstudios International Center for the Visual Arts worked to spotlight and develop contemporary Bahamian art.

In 2005, Schmid became the first ever recipient of the Lyford Cay Foundation’s Harry C. Moore Memorial Scholarship for the Arts to continue his studies at the Utrecht Graduate School of Visual Art and Design in The Netherlands. Also receiving an Endowment for the Arts Award in Graduate Studies, he successfully received his MA in Fine Art in 2006. Surrendering to the immediacy of new surroundings, Schmid took up video as a new medium of expression, producing multi-feed juxtaposed projections exploring the act of communicating identities.

Back in Nassau in 2007, Schmid embarked on a part-time teaching position at the College of The Bahamas and is now the Head of Department. Believing that it is important to be an artist that teaches—rather than a teacher who dabbles in art—he encourages his students to stay honest to themselves and their processes

Meanwhile, Schmid worked closely with Antonius Roberts, who held the curator position at the Central Bank of The Bahamas, to hang exhibitions in the space that has long held important significance to the local art community. In 2009, he took over as the official curator and until he left in 2013, he aimed to make the space more ambitious by taking on artists with provocative contemporary artwork and redefining their Annual Art Competition. As exhibitions director at Popopstudios ICVA, Schmid aims to display exhibitions that add relevant conversations to the contemporary Bahamian art world.

Schmid has exhibited in solo and group shows both at home in The Bahamas and in the wider Caribbean, United States of America, and Europe. In 2010, as the recipient of a 2009 Commonwealth Connections Residency Award, he completed a residency at Alice Yard in Port of Spain, Trinidad, eventually culminating in the exhibition Equilibrium. Also in 2010, Schmid exhibited work in the Liverpool Biennale in Liverpool, the United Kingdom. In 2013, he was selected as the Bahamian artist to present as solo show under Popopstudios ICVA at Volta NY, the invitational solo project fair to contemporary art around the world. Other notable exhibitions include Into the Mix (2012, Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft, Louisville, Kentucky, USA); Wrestlingwith the Image (2011, Art Museum of the Americas, Washington, DC, USA); Work! (2007, Diaspora Vibe Gallery, Miami Beach, Florida, USA); and Funky Nassau: Recovering an Identity (2006, Nassauischer Kunstverein, WeisbadenGermany), Show Off, LeandaKateLouise, London, United Kingdom (2015), Übersee: Cuba and The Bahamas: Contemporary Art from the Caribbean, HALLE 14 (2017) and numerous exhibitions at the National Art Gallery of The Bahamas