Kieshia Cooper's Concealed Within stands out at Kinetic exhibit

AMON SABA SAAKANA

There are basically two schools of visual art production in Trinidad and Tobago: the college-/university-educated, and the self-taught or those who attended one of the few schools that cater to teaching and transmitting inner traditions.

Kieshia Cooper, who functions as the curator and participant in the exhibition at Kinetic Mas Camp (41 Alberto Street, Woodbrook), which runs until June 5, had her hands full. Her own pathway to painting is itself a trajectory from the mundane to exciting possibilities. I remember her, perhaps at 18, working administratively at Makemba Kunle’s stalwart studio, Studio 66, and she was exposed to painting and the general arts while working there. Painters, poets, novelists, academic lecturers, singers, music groups and various personalities at various levels of recognition in their careers inevitably congregated there.

This exhibition is such a mix, but obviously dominated by the male vision. The masters include ancestor LeRoy Clarke and Kunle, and Bill Trotman, who constitute the living tradition, while the next generation of artists, like Keith Allen and Barry Walkins, are visibly present and Cooper represents the youngest generation. She is only one of two female artists on show. I feel this was a missed opportunity, for female painters are generally unrepresented, although UWI is constantly pelting them out as graduates.

An old stalwart, Bandele Iyapo, is closest to home, as he represented a photographic display of Carnival arts and some interesting photographic-print-media collisions. I found one work outstanding in both its execution and history-recalling.

He also has batik and batik-collided work, photographs and a number of other pieces. Iyapo is not your university-trained, gallery-imprisoned artist. He just released some new work in Tobago on a popular beach while he “hotelled” in a three-foot tent a few yards away. In Europe he would be tolerated or even canonised as eccentric. While in Africa, he was in “conversation” with a Fulani woman who was speaking to him fluently in Fulbe and he just smiled: friends intervened to say he did not speak the language. She was astonished, but Iyapo’s lifestyle mirrors that of the nomadic Fulani extremely accurately, and she must have spiritually sensed this.

Trotman, at 88, the oldest to show, has always been an artist who follows his own path, and these paintings, some derived from African-centred themes, tell the story of his individuality. One piece sticks in the mind: Bois War, the art of stick-fighting with histories in both Africa and Asia and immortalised here with a bloodied and sometimes deathly history. A polymath, dedicated to the arts of TT, Trotman lavishes his love on these figurative pieces.

I found the work of Antonio Butts not well chosen and confined to the topical in Trinbago, although he is an artist of tremendous resource and complexity.

Master artist Clarke had several pieces, but the most dramatic were his pen-and- ink explorations, though the white card showed signs of mould.

Kunle, another stalwart, innovator and arts patron, had a section of pen-and-ink which were not his best and a few paintings, one of which bore his stamp of complexity, puzzles and wonder.

Cooper did herself a disservice as her work was sandwiched on the wall without numbers, titles and selling prices, but one work, Concealed Within, impressed me with its colour, earth tones and geometric shapes.

I have known Allen for several years and his work was sculptural and of ceramics, decorated or mosaic, but he showed two original paintings that really exposed the mettle and sinews of his hand: Star Burst and Fire on Top, Fire below – the hand of an artist exploring environmental and scenic atmospheres with the colours and imagination to propel the viewer into an exciting world.

Walkins is a very talented and hard-working artist, but the work chosen to represent him did not measure up to his range and scope. I felt cheated by not viewing his more complex and challenging work.

The concept, location and presentation of these diverse artists are indicative of the range of TT’s diversity and the idea that the arts are thriving and developing, although the standards here were varied, from excellence to the mundane.

Born in TT, Dr Amon Saba Saakana migrated to the UK in 1965. He has a doctorate in drama and cultural studies from the School of Oriental & African Studies and Goldsmiths College, University of London. He has worked extensively in print and broadcast journalism and now divides his time between London and Trinidad.