Two years ago Gherdai Hassell burst on the Bermuda art scene with a solo exhibition at the Bermuda National Gallery.

To refresh your memory, it was called I Am Because You Are. That exhibition was impressive enough, but her current exhibition, Threads Unravelling, which is on show in the BNG Project Space, has way outpaced it.

In the intervening two years, Hassell’s art career has blossomed beyond what anyone could have predicted. In part, this is due to a change in media. She has been exploring textiles and all the ramifications that entails.

Hassell is primarily a collage artist, so her experimentation with textiles can be seen as an extension of her use of collage. This has been enhanced by her receiving a grant from the Arts Council England in 2022 which has allowed her time to concentrate on exploring various fabrics as well as techniques. She says that she wanted to approach textiles, quilting and tapestry in the same way she approaches collage – by layering.

In addition to her fabric art, Hassell has on exhibit six nature-based watercolours that are at the same time organic abstractions.

Threads Unravelling can be accessed on several different levels. It can be seen abstractly and appreciated for its textures, shapes and colours, but underlying all these surface qualities is Hassell’s interest in the humble onion, here seen as metaphor.

The artist was inspired in her use of the Bermuda onion as metaphor by Nellie E. Mussen’s book, Mind the Onion Seed. Musson “examines the contribution of Black Bermudian women, from the days of slavery when ‘the onion was to Bermuda what cotton was to America,’ through to the present day.”

Hassell sees the structure of an onion – its multiple layers – not only as it relates to her art making, but also as layers in identity; each layer possibly implying a given generation.

Going back to the days when we Bermudians were shipping tons of onions to the US and elsewhere, we became known as “onions” and although those days are long gone, that label lingers on. We are still onions. It is therefore appropriate that Hassell has selected the onion as a symbol of our Bermudian identity. Hassell says that her work is primarily about identity.

I suppose that most of us, in varying degrees, are interested in our own personal identities. Consider the success of genealogical DNA search establishments such as 23 and Me and Ancestry.com; it’s a topic that has considerable appeal to most of us.

In considering identity, I am reminded of that renowned Post-Impressionist artist Paul Gauguin, especially his largest and probably best known painting, Where Do we Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? These universal questions cross our minds when we are at our most thoughtful. This painting was created in 1897 while Gauguin was living in exile on the island of Tahiti.

Gauguin, who was a multinational, (his mother was from Peru), also claimed to be part Inca Indian, as well as Caucasian French. He spent some of his childhood years in Peru and apparently was most comfortable speaking Spanish. He was deeply interested in his own identity and given the Native American aspect of his background, he most likely saw himself as being from two separate and vastly different ethnicities. What does that do to one’s identity? When I think of identity issue in art, Gauguin’s painting most readily comes to mind.

In an 1898 letter to his friend, the Parisian-based art manager Daniel de Manfred, Gauguin wrote that he believed that this canvas not only surpassed all his preceding ones but that he probably would never do anything better or even anything like it. He then said that he had finished a philosophical work on a theme comparable to that of the gospel.

Gauguin’s philosophical painting just cited, is in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts.

Now back to Hassell’s show: it is a small exhibition, with just nine works and although they carry deep meanings, you can initially enjoy the show just for its sheer beauty. Indeed, it’s probably best to start with its beauty, its meanings will naturally come thereafter.

The exhibit was curated by Eve Godet Thomas. The brochure was designed by Linda Weinraub of Studio Fluent. It was sponsored by Skyport, Conyers, Orange Bay Company Ltd and Michelle Seymour Smith.

• Threads Unravelling is on display at the Bermuda National Gallery through March, with free admission