Matthew Chin

Re­porter

matthew.chin@guardian.co.tt

‘Boots and dogs’. When you hear these words, you may won­der what con­nec­tion does man’s best friend have with footwear. How­ev­er, in­stal­la­tion and con­tem­po­rary artist Dean Arlen’s ex­hi­bi­tion, with the same name, brings these worlds to­geth­er to il­lu­mi­nate un­spo­ken so­cial phe­nom­e­na.

Arlen is an alum­nus of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies De­part­ment of Cre­ative and Fes­ti­val Arts–Vi­su­al Arts Pro­gramme and a grad­u­ate of the On­tario Col­lege of Art and De­sign.

At the Frame Shop: A Space In­na Space on Ca­los Street, can­vas­es of the artist’s work are hung, while at the cen­tre of the room–and no sur­prise see­ing that the 58 year old is a fash­ion en­thu­si­ast—a dis­play of hand­craft­ed boots is lined up along the floor, each hav­ing their unique dec­o­ra­tions. Ac­cord­ing to Arlen, he col­lect­ed bot­tle caps and oth­er dis­card­ed items from pave­ments, drains, and fields that were con­sid­ered “un­want­ed” and “use­less” and that the av­er­age per­son throws away every day, to em­bell­ish his boots.

Re­flect­ing on the sub­ject mat­ter of his work, Boots and Dogs, he said it chal­lenges tox­ic mas­culin­i­ty, ne­olib­er­al­ism and neo-con­ser­v­a­tive na­tion­al­ist dis­cours­es. He iden­ti­fies his method­ol­o­gy to his art as a type of con­struc­tivism. The fin­ished prod­ucts, he ad­mit­ted, car­ry a child-like aes­thet­ic which he nei­ther de­nies nor is ashamed of. This is his artistry.

On the can­vas, he builds on lay­er by lay­er of pa­per, each bear­ing its own im­age, which he then sands down to re­veal a nar­ra­tive.

“Un­til about the sixth lay­er, I then take an elec­tric sander and start to go down and as I go down I find form from the lay­ers un­der­neath. So the idea is how you use a past and a present to cre­ate an ac­tion­able form. If you don’t know your past, then you don’t have a present; it’s kind of like ar­chae­ol­o­gy,” Arlen said.

Im­ages of boots and dogs are the veins that run through­out his work which act as metaphors—an iconog­ra­phy—for the lo­cal say­ing “Man is dog,” and the more pop­u­lar, “Dogs are man’s best friend.” The pieces pay at­ten­tion to the blocks where men en­gage in con­ver­sa­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly an in­ter­gen­er­a­tional space where­by those who “lime on the block” chat about what’s on their mind, that the artist him­self con­fess­es to have been part of in the past.

 Ex­plor­ing the blocks in which men would gath­er to lime, the men who would have dropped out of school, and those who would own their own busi­ness, is ev­i­dence, ac­cord­ing to the artist, that tox­ic mind­sets do get chal­lenged. “There was and is con­stant crit­i­cal analy­sis among the men in con­ver­sa­tion on the block,” he said.

“For ex­am­ple, if a guy comes with his dotish ideas, the fourth guy would put him in check,” Arlen added. “While in oth­er spaces, if you go to cer­tain blocks in cer­tain spaces the pre­dom­i­nant ig­no­rance and il­lit­er­a­cy is there–the guy com­ing up with in­cor­rect ideas won’t have any push or pull—these places do ex­ist.”

The male char­ac­ters in his paint­ings typ­i­cal­ly wear striped pants and are en­gaged in di­a­logue with each oth­er, of­ten in cir­cles.

“I think com­mu­ni­ties should have a mix—you can­not have a com­mu­ni­ty with one pre­dom­i­nant con­cept or mind­set. So, I think, mix­ing peo­ple in dif­fer­ent groups can be good. Men recog­nise stu­pid ideas but to air them or chal­lenge them with­in the group, they may feel os­tracised, they may take a guy out­side and talk to them one-on-one, and ask per­son­al­ly if they may have made a mis­take in what they said: ‘Boy, yuh think I mak­ing sense?’ This is what you would hear,” Arlen said.

He doc­u­ments the lifestyle of the men he has ob­served lim­ing on the block, al­so tak­ing no­tice of that cross-dress­ing cul­ture ap­par­ent in lo­cal the­atre with men wear­ing dress­es. “There is a cross-dress­ing sit­u­a­tion in our cul­ture, I think, in all the eth­nic groups,” he said.

De­spite a great turnout that would in­spire any­one to ei­ther ex­tend their show or im­me­di­ate­ly deep dive in­to a new one, for an artist like Arlen, cre­ativ­i­ty must be al­lowed to breathe. How­ev­er, his next show will see the re­turn of his boots, but not as art pieces. Rather, they will be fash­ion wear that may lure view­ers in­to his own ver­sion of a man’s world.

 For his next show, Arlen is in­ter­est­ed in cre­at­ing wear­able ver­sions of the boots and giv­ing his im­ages big­ger frames with­out sac­ri­fic­ing the so­ci­etal is­sues and iconog­ra­phy per­ti­nent to his can­vas.

Boots and Dogs will run un­til Feb­ru­ary 29 at The Frame Shop: A Space In­na Space, 65 Car­los Street, Wood­brook.