Sometime during the height of the “lock down” I had reason to venture out of my house. While driving through Port of Spain, I saw spray painted on some galvanize around a construction site, “COVID NUH REAL”. A conspiracy theory in three words.
When the unexpected occurs, especially if it’s tragic, it is human nature to deny it at first. No one at the start of this year would have ever dreamt that we would be facing a global pandemic, the result of which would be a complete disruption of life as we know. Tragically, this also came with the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people; just over 1.3 million at the time of writing this.
The question of whether it is real or not, orchestrated by the ruling elite or not, manufactured or not seems irrelevant now. Eight months into this global health crisis, that has crippled economies, sunk people into poverty and deepened or created mental health issues for many, and we are still coming to terms with the reality of how fragile our world is and grappling with how to move forward safely.
Artists, especially during the early stages of the global shut down, found themselves surrounded by multiple streams of creative possibilities, and for some, a real pressure to create, given that we all had nothing to do but ‘stay home and stay safe’. However, it is precisely the dichotomy between creating something out of nothing and the real fear of the loss of life, health and income that became either the catalyst for unparalleled output (and not just quantity but new ways of seeing) or the reason for heightened awareness of self and deep introspection, with less visible work. Both responses were valid, both took effort and both were REAL. It was not one or the other, but rather an ebbing and flowing of states of emotion; the true magnitude of which could only be mapped in retrospect.
Appreciation of the mundane went hand in hand with existential musings. I was hardly ever home at 10am on a weekday, and for a while, I was a stranger in my own house. Every ordinary thing seemed unfamiliar; a fan, a clock, the plant on the kitchen counter, the way the light peered through the living room window, all seemed bizarre. I imagine for the artist, art was, in those moments, just the wandering of the mind, the lengthening of the breath, the feel of a soft breeze through the kitchen window and the internalization of strange day-time sounds and sights etc. A period of acclimatization to the unbelievable.
And then… the waves of creativity that could either gently lap at your sensibilities and take you back to the roots of your practice or crash against your ideologies with a sense of urgency to create, archive and mark the moments of history that we were living through.
And it was out of these dissonant modes of being – urgency and reticence, resolve and helplessness, purpose and lassitude, that the works of these artists were born. It can be said that periods of isolation are not new to artists, in fact many artists crave and seek out moments like this that may afford them the mental and physical space necessary to deep-think. And there is a sort of comfort in knowing that you have chosen to slow down while the rest of the world is still moving… but what happens when the entire world stops moving… by force?
This question may be best answered through a quick glance at the past. There have been many references over the last few months to this pandemic being the closest thing to war that this generation has had to face; but this time, war with an enemy that cannot be seen… and although the comparison may be a stretch there are many similarities that cannot be overlooked.
Werner Haftman wrote in his account of exiled artists under Nazi Germany that… “the threatened isolation actually brought moments of real happiness, when after a successful piece of work it seemed that the enforced banishment from the bustle of public life and the isolation that exile had brought had given his (the artist) thought and work greater intensity by throwing him back upon himself.” He offered that “It was the prime example of man in exile finding that strange state corresponding to a hidden stratum of his nature that had always been there.”
I found the above insights relevant to the current show, as many artists have expressed similar sentiments towards this moment and their work. Sarah Knights intimates that for her, the period of confinement afforded a greater appreciation of her loved ones and her health. There is a repeating energy in her work, and much like my houseplants that seemed strange in the morning light, her philodendrons and other plant studies inform us about the artist’s need to reconnect with the nature of the objects in her space in order to make sense of what was happening in the world.
Luis Vasquez La Roche invites us to share our lives in lockdown, through a visual archive interestingly named “Dancing in the Streets”. Much about what we know of each other’s lives for the last eight months has been gleaned through our posts on various social media platforms as well as through mainstream media coverage of events. The artist, through this project, attempts to curate our humanity at a time when we are still discovering what that truly means.
Rodell Warner proposes a digital avatar of himself that uses his past tweets (across several twitter accounts) combined with images, to project himself into spaces that he cannot physically reach, thus informing the present and the future. This is remarkable. A simple yet effective way to wield the power of the internet in your favour. Over the course of the last 8 or 9 months we have all had an increase in our digital footprints due to the need to connect with each other remotely. Questions about private vs public data, our ideas of our virtual vs real-life selves, concerns about our digital legacy and the possibility of our digital footprints serving as our avatars long after we are gone are all raised in the dust of Warner’s magical proposition.
The artist in confinement has taken the same journey that we all have, that has brought us to this new future, still full of uncertainties. The artist in confinement is not our saviour but has certainly offered us a sort of map with which to navigate our separatedness. There is, for instance, an intimacy in the way that Alicia Milne presents her embroidered pieces, that can teach us about how unexpected and sometimes difficult circumstances can lead to beautiful moments if we are willing to slow down and look at our lives deeply and with care. Sabrina Charran and Maria Diaz hold up a mirror to our faces that shows us parts of us that exist in the shadows longing to be acknowledged. The sometimes ugly parts, the unrequited parts, the parts that we can no longer mask now that we are faced with ourselves everyday. And Shannon Alonzo, with work that interrogates the nuances between history, culture and identity, asks us to look closer at ourselves in order to find our place in the world.
This exhibition is the necessary archiving of a time in our history that we will need to recall and deconstruct in the future. The record will show that the artist was concerned with his/her/their practice being true to the dynamism of the present global moment while facing his/her/their own personal challenges and concerns.
Reference text:
Haftman, Banned and Persecuted, 18. Haftman, Werner. Banned and Persecuted: Dictatorship of Art Under Hitler. Cologne: DuMont Buchverlag, 1996.
Nimah Muwakil-Zakuri is currently the Curator of the Central Bank of Trinidad and Tobago’s Money Museum and Art Collection. She is responsible for the museum which is the main outreach arm of the institution, its programming and development as well as the bank’s 50 year old art collection which was started in the 1960’s. Nimah graduated from Universidad de Oriente, Santiago de Cuba in 2007. As an IVLP alumnus in Cultural Heritage Preservation and a recent recipient of a Getty Fellowship, she attended the 2015 American Alliance of Museum’s Annual Conference and participated in the training sessions on Leadership in Museums with other curators from around the world. I.M.P.A.C.T (Independent Muslim Professional Acting Together) was co-founded in 2012 and the Trinidad and Tobago Alliance of Museums (TTAM) co-founded 2014 both by Nimah. Her deep interest in art and matters of heritage has enabled her introspection on her own unique history as a child of the “Jamaat” and 1990. The journey is a personal one, where she will attempt to document and later tell the stories that no one knows exist. It is her hope that her story will resonate not just within her immediate community, but with a wider audience.
Website: http://tt.linkedin.com/pub/nimah-muwakil-zakuri/64/750/575