DArlen Projects: ESSAY - THE IDENTITY OF 50 YEARS OF ART AND DESIGN

The Patino Elders.
My idea of family came from matriarchal side of both my mother and father's family, both my gradfathers had passed on by the time of my birth. Most of my time was spent with my mother's 14 brother and sisters.

THE IDENTITY OF 50 YEARS OF ART AND DESIGN:

A POST-COLONIAL PERSONAL

YARD AESTHETICS, YARD VOICE, YARD GROWTH.

Cable TV '90

The Unwaged Artist.

Over the past week, there has been as an interesting array of talks that centred on the issue of identity, nation, generation and re- positioning within nation and region, culture and the social space of Trinidad and Tobago.

There is the idea that there are multiple identity possibilities i.e. Trinbagonian, Caribbean, the international borderless global identity, religious, spiritual, political and the personal identity construct. Being born into a post-independence space of Trinidad and Tobago and growing up East of Port of Spain (the capital city) Trincity, Tacarigua. My formative years were the 1970s; a generation that witnessed a state of emergency due to revolt and protest that went viral, an oil boom, the 1980s money was all good, drugs were rampant and my generation was hooked on the good life: sex, drugs and parties, were the order of the day. The 1990s brought tertiary education and the pursuit of dreams, ideologies and intellectual pursuits. My generation became mature, whatever that meant in this space.

Fete Until 5:55A.M. '90

Trincity was one of the first urban development projects that attempted to decentralize the Port of Spain population. I grew up understanding my middle-class identity. This meant that there was an understanding of position and what that position meant. Proper grammar - meant knowing when to speak proper diction – you don’t say “Where de the Out-House?” at the dinner party table, the right education- meant going to “The Right” scholarly institution- not the “Your Right” scholarly institution, proper cultural exposure- meant proper values and understanding a range of cultural and artistic expressions, proper attire - meant style and carrying it well in the proper surroundings- your space must be clean and orderly, this meant chores, real chores.

This is the closet I got so far in finding a photo
of Trincity Development

My neighbourhood was filled with a cosmopolitan of laughter - of uncles and aunties. These were the elders in the community/friends of my parents, not everyone was fortunate to be called an uncle/auntie, but then you were called a Mr, Ms, Mrs. Their tongues babysitting us from behind the gate. Their voices shouted at us to calm our little young bones as we sped through the space and time. I cut my first cake with Suzie, a creole-white Trinbagonian, we danced at the party with my friends Indo-Chinese, Afro-Trini, Indo-Trini, white-creole, mixed ‘breddren’ and sistren. My best friends were the rainbow. I also was surrounded by my father’s contemporaries who were/are among the best in the cultural/artistic landscape of the Caribbean if not the world.

Drawing of the original House

The Neighbours. This was a recent photo.
An older pic would have had the Delph's, the Farrel's,
the Ashton's/Rice's,
Pacheco's

I recall, maybe at 9 or 10 years of age, there I was, one night on the water bed, throbbing back and forth, caught in my imaginary boat. Before me was a line of pro-keds; man that was a lot of pro-keds, I was amazed at his wealth, this man had a water bed and many pro-keds. To my mind at that time - he had to be wealthy. They all belonged to Dr. Rat, a charismatic ‘community leader’ of Port of Spain in those days of the late seventies. My father did not stop there we were at the Country Club, the Yacht Club, we drove through communities and would stop to lime with friends, he would set up camp on the beach, the boat would turn over, the men would cook curry, the women laugh.

I understood space as belonging to me: “Big Men” were to be respected, although not necessarily as intelligent. They were not that beacon of intelligence that they were made them out to be. They were flawed and questionable - I learned this at an early age. The idea that I could question authority started on those adventures I had with my dad. In rooms where I would sit silently and share food with these men and listen to them speak about life or not much of life. I realised that men in suits aren’t necessarily men with honour. In those days the suit died for me. In those days religion also died when I questioned the priest in R.I. (religious instruction class) about the gambling and drinking that was promoted in our May Fair at Fatima, his response was and I paraphrase “If it is good for the Church, it is good.” The next day the priest asked if anyone will like to leave RI, not one man moved. On the previous day they were all - “yeah man”, patting yuh on the back, “you know that’s true”. So that was it for me at school - no religious instruction and a free period. So when some time later artist Chris Cozier spoke to the suit, it was an interesting flash back.

Internal of the renovated house, Which still
kept the original intention of the open design.

As a teenager my identity at that time was anti-establishment, I was seriously questioning the space that was around me. At home, the art works of Leroy Clarke, Leo Glasgow, Earl Lovelace, were swirling around me: reinforcing my questioning. Interestingly the first books that I read from my father’s library were - In the Fist of the Revolution and The Chariots of the Gods. I was around fourteen; Granma was being sold on Frederick Street along with the Amnesty International magazine that highlighted human rights abuses. South America was the hot spot with the death squads and the execution of minorities and people of colour. My first piece in an exhibition at what was to become Studio 66 (where I met Makemba Kunle), was a painting of Yasser Arafat, famed PLO leader.

In this photo at the back we would see the Glasgow (to the left, Cane Field Burning), Embah, a Leroy Clarke came later.
We had another on of the many family functions that I grew up around. AS you get older you realize how these functions develop identity.

I was moving through my space moving through multiple intellectual identities. The first to go was my Roman Catholic Identity, then my PNM Political Identity, then my Revolutionary Islamic Identity, Ethnic Identity – coming to terms with my mixed-ethnic makeup, I was always reconstructing this. But it was while dating my Indo-Trini sistren that I understood myself as being a ‘Black man’, not an Afro- man, but a Black man. It was here that I experienced the aversion to the Black-man. There was all this hiding, ducking and manipulation dating Indian women; meeting them at the corner not at the home, running from their brothers, dipping in the back seat. That was too much stress, that experience was short-lived. My sister’s (who is a red woman – high coloured) experience with the Indo-Trini community was different. I grew my dreads around that time, embracing not Rasta, but revolution against Cultural Babylon. As a Caribbean Black Man, I could embrace my genetic Indian-Man, My Amerindian-Man and My African-Man and my neo-colonial European-Man.

THE HOUSE. '90
One of the early pieces where I confronted patriarchy.
iT was around this time I started deconstructing the patriarchal model,
with the attempt in finding a new system that could work

Art would become the main intellectual stimulus by my early 20’s, it still is. As I have realized along the way art has many humanizing traits. It allows human beings to mature politically, socially, economically and intellectually. I saw this in my experience as an art teacher at special school in Petit Valley. The students were taken out of normal school because they couldn’t keep up. They were angry, had low self-esteem and depression. There I was: interacting with them, talking with them and engaging their minds through the process of art. Here I had a direct line to their souls. Melanie a shy introverted girl, after a time drawing, talking about her art, feeling good about her art, stood up for her work to the bullies, she stuck it to the wall with a pride that the other teachers where proud of and her peers respected. Now was the time to go to her home and talk to her parents, so they could reinforce what was happening in the classroom. It was time that we approach the community to raise funds or in-kind support for the materials which we didn’t have (This was being done on a shoe string budget). But the management was not very supportive. So the project slowly got frustrated and died. This was my first brush with the creative education model: this was also my first brush with bureaucracy.

The New School Design, 2009.
Based on the idea of the tribe,
Materials : wood/clear plastic wall to allow light/
Roof like in Amerindian tacthed housing drops right down,
allowing for an open room.

So on this 50^th Anniversary of Independence and my personal anniversary, can I celebrate? Yes, because I have grown; I have understood things, questioned and looked deep inside to the darkness, embraced it and moved on with it next to me, I haven’t discarded or shunned the darkness but lived with it on my shoulders always whispering in my ears. It was like what Hulk said in the Avengers, “That’s the secret, I’m always angry”. The trick of nation is to place the darkness on the outside, deal with it frontally, using the right politics. We still do not have a proper art gallery 50 years on, why?. A truthful response to this will explain alot of our art academia Department of Creative and Festival Arts and our art representatives, The Ministry of Culture/Museum

The Guitar. 90's

HOWEVER

While some of us have grown, personally, our institutions and our nation has not grown. Our psychological deficiencies have incapacitated our institutions, political parties and our economic diversification. Our low self esteem has created a hostile nation – psychologists will tell you the symptoms of low self-esteem and you will see that we fit right there - rash, hostile, defensive, always having an excuse, blaming the other.

I have come to understand the fluidity of identity, the ability to reconstruct through analysis, the art, the future and the design.

This was part of a piece that was shown at the early stages of the CCA7 project.
The exhibition was in the administrative building of Fernande's Industrial Estate.
Where ACLA Works is.