Marinna Shareef takes audience into her inner world

FULL-TIME artist Marinna Shareef, 27, is not afraid to pour her inner world onto the canvas or screen, even when it’s chaotic, dark and intimate. Her work, bursting with colour and surreal symbolism, tells a story of bipolar disorder and Caribbean identity.

Fresh from a one-week residency at the Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change at York University, Canada, Shareef is still processing the inspiration that came from the experience. During her stay, she interacted with students, gave two artist talks about her video pieces and was moved to complete a painting within three days.

While there, she also showed one of her pieces, God of Whimsy, at Dr Andil Gosine’s Nature’s Wild with Andil Gosine (RETURNS) exhibition at Paul Petro Contemporary Art, Toronto, from October 10-November 8.

Shareef collaborated with him on the piece, a continuation of her God of Depression and God of Mania series, marking the first time she had ever worked with another artist.

She said when she read Gosine’s book Nature’s Wild: Love, Sex and Law in the Caribbean, on which the exhibition was based, she related to his experiences. She felt comforted to realise she was not alone when she read of his growing up in an Indo-Trinidadian family, particularly the idea of inheriting trauma from their parents while trying to take care of themselves.

The resulting artwork is a surreal portrait of Gosine, who is depicted as a pastel, rainbow-like god who is meant to look serious, while the elements around him suggest fun and whimsy.

“I wanted to grab elements of things that visually interested me from his book. I do a lot of work with nostalgia and work about memory, so hearing that he always took his Miss Piggy doll around with him when he was small, things like he would always wear a plaid shirt and have bows on his shoes – those things really stood out to me.

“So I wanted to create this god with elements of his childhood. Because I think we look at childhood with these eyes that, although we might not have had the perfect childhood, it was the greatest time in our lives. So I used those elements to create this god that was sort of glittery and shiny and very regal.”

After her time in Canada, Shareef headed to The Bahamas for the Fuze Caribbean Art Fair, where she presented two of her videos and enjoyed watching people’s reactions and interpretations of her work.

“Some people were like, ‘Oh, wow, that’s dark.’ And then other people were like, ‘That’s funny,’ because they didn’t understand it. But you know, that’s just what comes with art, because everybody has their own interpretation.”

Her work often evokes both laughter and discomfort – a reflection of her life with bipolar disorder, which was diagnosed at 18 while she was studying at UWI, St Augustine.

“Sometimes I do experience depression still, or little bouts of mania that do affect me working and creating art in way that I would like to.

“But I am stable now, and I’m able to create work on how I used to feel, or how I seldom feel.

“It affects mostly my productivity. I sometimes have to accept, ‘Okay, I’m not feeling good. Let me not push it. If I have to take this week and just kind of chill, I have to do that.’

“And I have to be able to do that, because I’m funding myself with the art.

“I don’t want to romanticise it (bipolar disorder) in any way, because it is hard, but it is nice to get it out there and to hear people who relate to it in any way.”

Shareef’s art is largely self-portraiture rendered in surrealism and pop art, exploring the highs and lows of bipolarity through vibrant imagery.

“I use the portraits and I manipulate them in a way to convey emotion and even show some sort of metaphor to describe how I feel during a manic episode or a depressive episode.

“My work is about dark subjects, but I would say I kind of have a sense of humour about it as well.”

The Maraval resident often incorporates photography and TT iconography, like local snacks, drinks and nostalgic objects, into her heavily edited compositions, as they are both a comfort and a metaphor.

“When I’m sad, I just like to eat and sort of use that as a coping mechanism. It is something that, at the time, seems like this is gonna give me dopamine, it’s gonna make me feel better. And it looks so nice to eat!

“But then after, you feel the effects of it.”

The imagery and abstract nature of her work can be confusing and disorienting at first glance, but a deeper look can extract meaning.

“My work is so personal. In those videos, I’m talking about or describing events that happened to me, that I had to get out in some sort of way so I would feel better.”

Although her pieces are emotionally charged, they are not created in moments of instability. She works when she feels level or balanced, when she can examine how she felt during an episode, rather than working while experiencing those feelings. So the work is not emotional for her, but it is an intimate process.

Each piece is carefully planned, sketched out and refined. They are rarely a result of spontaneity, as, she said, a lot of decision-making goes into ensuring the final work accurately expresses her emotions.

“Just by doing what I’m doing, I have to be an advocate. I have to be an advocate for myself and for other people who experience these things. And I think it really is just about education. You have to tell people, ‘This is something I go through, and it’s pretty normal.’

“And in doing this, I realised how normal it is, because a lot of people who you wouldn’t even expect would tell me, ‘You know, I’ve had hallucinations before,’ and they never even thought to check it out, because it's so seen as taboo.

“So a lot of people are suffering without knowing what to do about it, because we just have such a big stigma towards seeking help, which…shouldn’t be, because it is just like being physically sick.”

Shareef recalled wanting to be an artist at age four, and doing art at CSEC and CAPE levels at Holy Name Convent, Port of Spain. She became interested in video editing and experimented by creating videos of people she admired, as well as edits of herself and collage-like videos about how she felt.

She recalled when she was choosing her subjects in secondary school, her father was apprehensive about her doing art. Her mother thought the process would be relaxing.

It was not. It was a lot of hard work. Her father saw her dedication as well as the joy she got from it, and supported her. He even helped her with some of her larger projects.

“They thought an artist is just somebody who paints, but they are now getting to see it’s a little bit more than that. They might not understand my work, but now they definitely are fully supportive.

“And sometimes my work is so personal that I might not invite them to one of my shows. It’s not that I’m hiding it, but I want to protect them.”

She was inspired by Caribbean artists who did similar work, like Barbadian interdisciplinary artist Versia Harris.

“I had never seen anything like it before, like mixed-media animation. I definitely got inspired to try my hand at that, but in my own way.”

At UWI, St Augustine, she got a bachelor’s in visual arts in 2019. She said her lecturers urged students to keep producing work, whether or not others saw it. A few months after she graduated, the pandemic hit, and she ran with that advice.

“I think that really got me to where I am now, because I made so much work in those two years that I was able to have two solo exhibitions out of that work – God of Mania in 2023 and God of Depression in 2024 at the Frame Shop in Woodbrook.”

She also participated in a six-month virtual artist residency with Caribbean Digital and Alice Yard in 2022, in which she was mentored by veteran artist Christopher Cozier. The result was an exhibition at Granderson Lab in Belmont, where her videos were projected in hanging saris, on a bed and in a grave, exploring how the physical environment could extend the work’s emotional impact.

In 2023, one of her videos won Best New Media Film at the TT Film Festival.

Cozier and Gosine continue to mentor her, offering advice and recommending residencies. She also receives honest feedback from peers and encouragement from her boyfriend of nine years.

Looking ahead, Shareef hopes to show her work at the Museum of Modern Art in New York some day, but for now, she wants to keep applying for residencies and grants, honing her craft and sharing her message.