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| photos courtesy - Ashrap Richard Ramsaran |
Embah’s Art,
The
National Museum of Trinidad and Tobago, Artists Coalition of Trinidad and Tobago , The Artists Society of Trinidad and Tobago...Civil
Society in defining legacy
On
the passing of Embah and the termination of Camile Selvon-Abraham, a disturbing
thought came up. Over the years the National Museum of Trinidad and Tobago,
have never found it fit to do a retrospective of Embah’s contribution to the
aesthetics history of this country and the wider region. Why?...Embah is arguably
one of our great painters, a solid philosopher and a historical treasure trove
of facts and figures of events. Embah’s art holds within it a sovereignty to
self, when I peer into his work, I can see me, that innocence of self when you
stand naked before the alter, before you take on words of the world, becoming
that evolved human, global, neo liberal, educated self. Embah, kept it real at
a high level of concentration, deliberate, forcing us to think of the
primitive, placing at our feet the sugar cane plantation, which we have been
running and fuming about, ever since emancipated and indentureship.
I
met Embah as a child on the walls at home, it seems that Embah would approach
workers in Tatil building to buy his paintings which my father did, so I was
exposed to Embah’s work from a young child, in some way his paintings gave
validation to the primitive; the child, that primal me, which exist and still
exist in me as an adult, an artist...a worker, that part in me which loves, but
is afraid to show it due to a modernization, which spelt the death to emotions.
Embah’s primitivism told me not to be afraid of the line, the mark or the
colour that is me; when we were told to conform, speak, and perform in a
colonialist manner. Embah made the primitive right and challenged almost single
handily the notion of an empirical art education, based deep in the bowels of
Western visual conceptualization. I’m not sure if Dad, bought Embah’s work
because he sympathised with the artists plight or he truly loved the worked,
for whatever reason, I’m forever grateful to be part of the work in such an
intimate way, Embah’s paintings allowed me certain visual confidence to step
into my aesthetic skin, which was confrontational to the traditional
representations our society was accustomed. So when I was told why don’t you
appeal to the market, or when I was told that I should understand how it works,
etc etc...they should understand origin. I will also say that I was also
confronted by Leroy Clarke and Leo Glasglow...but it was Embah’s work that
excited me.
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| photos courtesy - Ashrap Richard Ramsaran |
THE
NATIONAL MUSEUM
I
always thought that Embah had the opportunity to excite our society, Peter Doig
and Chris Ofili, both technically sound fine artists, expats, with international
art careers invested time in Embah’s art...so why our National Museum of
Trinidad and Tobago or the Artists Society of Trinidad and Tobago , never saw
the fit to invest in presenting Embah to the national community or to the world.
The most I can think...Embah represents a primitivism, the middle class, in
charge of promoting culture, feels ashamed of, they repel or wish to repeal all
that is with the natural expression, the jammette, the child to adult, and our
natural instinctive qualities to simplicity, or is it just plane short-sightedness
or laziness.
TTHE
SURREALIST?
The
surreal act of tapping into the deep inner core of our mental and physical is art
function. As I perused the Menil Collection, Houston, Texas,
The Menil Collection - “an ongoing collection by anthrolpologist
Edmund Carpenter as a tribute to Dominique de Menil and realized by the Menil
Collection staff, the exhibition opened August 4, 1999”. Catalogue cover.
In
the exhibition I witnessed, art and sculptures from tribal culture of Africa,
the Pacific and Oceanic regions, which stimulated the surrealist painters to
reach deep into exploring the inner mental capabilities of expression, in the
quest of finding a new aesthetics.
“In Oceanic art, one finds the
greatest sustained effort to express the interpretations of the physical and
the mental to resolve the dualism of perception and representation.
-
Andre Breton
-
WITNESSES, to a
Surrealist Vision, The Menil Collection, menil.org
Here
I was in the middle of surrealist masters, artists who revolutionized the
Western aesthetics, with a stimulation of tribalism, from the heart of the
Third World, a gallery staff, willing to understand, listen and present this to
their community.
Our
National Museum has never been able to intellectualize these conceptions. You
noticed that the exhibition was conceptualized by an anthropologist, and has
been on display since 1999, that is over 16 years. Let’s understand the length
and breadth of conceptualization, the investment into projects. This is the
ingredients of a National Museum.
But
I’m getting ahead of myself...when I saw this collection, I understood Embah as
a surrealist, an artist who was caught in the mist of the mind, in the power of
the other, seeing that deeper meaning in things, you can call it up-cycling,
for an ecological, political conversation. But Embah was caught in a
intellectual, philosophical, spirituo-political conversation with
objectification. If we take into consideration his understanding of his African
traditions and knowledge, I can say that Embah is a surrealist. But also, for
me a collage artist caught in materiality and convergence of materials, Embah
works hold deep natural traditions of survival, necessity, using the
everydayness of objects and implying into them, Obeah, further implication on
the everyday, like his xylophones, musical sculptural metaphors for alters, for
our Obeah, they were imbued with his Obeah, you could have interacted with the
work, the sounds coming out created another dynamic, another look of we Obeah.
Embah was able to put the everydayness on another level, through the magic of
his art, Obeah of being...
DESIGN
Structurally,
Embah speaks of our natural ability to be innovative, from a design position
Embah’s works pulls to our direct visual core, a conversation of the throw away
object and how we as a people, have been able to make a 10cents out of a
5cents. We have built our homes, we have built our economics and cultural space
out of reuse, our traditional space has been built on the fact that nothing
almost never goes to waste. Embah’s work acknowledges these facts. Embah’s work
can be seen from an anthropology of ecology, design and architecture through art.
I’ll
expect that a National Museum will speak of these issues more in-depth, with
more passion and curiosity of Embah’s contribution to the intellectual,
philosophical legacy to our aesthetics. Not only for Embah’s art, but for art
and design.
ACTT
Is
doing their thing, there thing is good... but there needs to be some kind of
re-structuring of ACTT, as a representative of cultural groups, we need to see
how best this can happen. It must start somewhere in the office. I’m not sure
if a letter was written on behalf of Camille Selvon Abraham, there has been
stillness and silence from the umbrella group...elections is here, have we
gazetted our demands. ACTT needs to re-ACTT
THE
ART SOCIETY
Well
the art society is all about the private concerns of certain artists, if you’re
about that, being a member matters, if you’re about the wider expanse of the
politics of art and design in our society the Artists Society of Trinidad and
Tobago, lives in an antiquated dream, lost to them is the modern political
nuances of art, design, sculpture and craft. On this eve of elections, culture
sits at the lowest ebb, the bastard child in the cabinet, used as a slush fund,
to play politics with; because culture is soca, chutney and calypso. I’ll ask,
did the Artists Society of Trinidad and Tobago, gazette their membership vision
for their sector? Or how we can contribute in the development of our society?
I
just hope one of you will be able to do a proper retrospective of a Master
Artist, whose contribution goes further and deeper into our skin than we’ll
like to acknowledge.
RIP,
EMBAH, 2015.
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