Fences: Reah Lee Sing's jewellery links past to present

Artist Reah Lee Sing’s Fences comes at an opportune time in world history. Civil strife and wars, resulting in the creation of asylum-seekers, economic migrants, and all those in search of better lives, have led to the crossing of borders. Easy accessibility to information in this 21st century has brought us closer to these experiences and, in our own island, the Venezuelan presence provides a tangible example of these border crossings.

In Fences, a jewellery exhibition which Lee Sing describes as “a memory project with historical and cultural elements,” the artist returns to her past to mine memories, bringing them forward to give them form. The result is layered pieces in what she describes as “art essays.”

Lee Sing, a self-taught painter, traveller and observer of human life, has, over the past eight years, become known for her figurative and landscape oil paintings. With an almost photographic quality to them, her pieces have chronicled a range of subjects, but most striking has been her preoccupation with the common man and the human experience. Fences is no different, though the medium is.

The act of designing and creating jewellery brings immense satisfaction to her and as a figurative artist, she brings to metal her understanding of the soft human form. Her pieces in this exhibition includes the human figure, sometimes adding colour to the form with gold, enamels, pearls and gemstones.

“On one level, Fences harkens back to my childhood, when ours and our neighbours’ yards were oftentimes separated only by a simple wooden, wire or galvanize fence. The physical fence was very often dilapidated and therefore inconsequential. It posed little or no barrier between families. We saw everyone and everything through the fence. The fence was more a link than a divide. It hid very little and was a common space for sharing conversation, food and sundry other things both day and night. The porous fence gave a sense of companionship and security all at once.”

The fences of her childhood, she explained, were not meant to keep neighbours out, although you wouldn’t enter your neighbour’s yard without announcing yourself, out of respect and or unless invited – a respectful and fluid boundary.

“Maybe the chickens and dogs, but not people. We didn’t need the level of security that has created the harder fences we have now. And if anything, the fact that we could see into the neighbour’s yard was a security measure because if there was a cry for help, the yards were accessible.”

This fence provides, in a piece entitled Tobago Wedding, for instance, a stabilising foundation on which the characters are placed. While practical, the viewer can interpret the piece as she sees fit.

Notable pieces include: Golden Cage which is a four-inch high pendant, designed as a fine silver bird cage with a visibly pregnant woman and two children plated in 24-karat gold. At their feet is a black pearl crusted in gold paint.

Another brooch places the woman under an umbrella, in long dress, as if waiting for someone or something. She is standing on a large fire opal gemstone and surrounded by garnet and champagne cubic zirconias, in the shape of eyes.

Like memory, which twists and recreates and is never completely perfect, the pieces here play on the idea of imperfection as beauty. As such, the textures are rough, the artist, pushing the limits of the material that she uses to create unconventional pieces rooted in the local.

In modern-day Trinidad, this exhibition encourages us to return to a not-so-distant past, to examine ideas of privacy and security. But this is a jewellery exhibition, and jewellery by definition is meant to adorn, to beautify, to make statements. It is an indulgence, but an indulgence that sits on the body of its wearer, a piece over which we converse, over which we establish relationships, and on which both the wearer’s and viewer’s imagination plays, in much the same way as fences.

Jewellery is emotive even as it is adornment, representative of place and time. They are personal statements and heirlooms, vintage and modern, taking on different meanings at different times, paired with particular garments and moods. And it is all these aspects that this exhibition now brings to us. And more importantly, it is situated in the familiar and the local.

Fences opens on November 26 and runs until November 30 at Chi Studio, Gatacre Street, Woodbrook. Part proceeds of the exhibition will be donated to charity.