Mar­sha Pearce

A re­view by

Mar­sha Pearce

The as­sertive ti­tle of the lat­est ex­hi­bi­tion Ma­ma Dis is Mas sets up an ex­pec­ta­tion that it will point view­ers to a de­f­i­n­i­tion of T&T's an­nu­al rit­u­al of mas­quer­ade and per­for­mance art. Yet, the show of over 70 works un­wit­ting­ly raised more ques­tions about the state of Car­ni­val rather than of­fer­ing its own con­scious­ly il­lu­mi­nat­ing in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the sub­ject mat­ter.

A num­ber of the artists fea­tured in the group ex­hi­bi­tion pre­sent­ed cos­tumed hu­man fig­ures as iso­lat­ed el­e­ments, ex­tract­ed from the throngs of peo­ple–that heady con­text of crowd­ed flesh, falling sweat and con­cen­trat­ed in­dul­gence–usu­al­ly as­so­ci­at­ed with Car­ni­val rev­ell­ry.

Ann Sta­ple­ton's Bot­tle n' Spoon was an acrylic ren­der­ing of three men in a pic­ture of per­cus­sion set against a back­ground of blue and yel­low. Sim­i­lar­ly, Naz­im Baksh's jab jab's cracked their whips while his min­strels shook their tam­bourines in paint­ings with back­drops de­scribed in red, yel­low, or­ange and pink.

Mar­tin Su­perville's Spir­it of Dance in oils and Jef­fery Pataysingh's colour pen­cil im­ages of a blue dev­il and jab jab sit­u­at­ed char­ac­ters in white sur­round­ings.

Sher­lann Pe­ters' free-stand­ing clay sculp­tures al­so of­fered in­di­vid­ual looks at such char­ac­ters as the dame lor­raine, ba­by doll and fan­cy In­di­an. The space of the gallery be­came the set­ting for these tra­di­tion­al mas char­ac­ters, with Pe­ters' skill­ful­ly ex­e­cut­ed Flag Woman wav­ing from a white, wood­en plinth in­stead of the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah.

Dis­con­nect­ing these fig­ures from the Car­ni­val com­mo­tion had the ef­fect of a sense of in­ti­ma­cy, al­low­ing the view­er ac­cess to sin­gle por­traits from a mul­ti­di­men­sion­al fes­ti­val. These works height­ened the hu­man com­po­nent of Car­ni­val in a man­ner that, if asked what is mas, one might say: mas is about the peo­ple. In par­tic­u­lar, Kender­son No­ray's strong vi­su­als of sailor mas­quer­aders un­der­scored the idea that mas is to be found in a fa­cial ex­pres­sion, in a body ges­ture, in the tilt of a shoul­der, the twist of an an­kle, the bend of a knee.

Gen­er­al­ly, how­ev­er, this ex­hi­bi­tion lacked va­ri­ety and quick­ly be­came dull and repet­i­tive in its ex­ces­sive dis­play of pan­men, stick­fight­ers, min­strels, jab jabs and dev­ils. The in­cor­po­ra­tion of beach scenes was an­oth­er hack­neyed fea­ture of the show.

Is mas about mo­not­o­ny and pre­dictabil­i­ty?

Works by Saman­tha Rochard and Fay Ann Ryan al­so demon­strat­ed an un­mis­tak­able lack of un­der­stand­ing of hu­man anato­my and pro­por­tion.

Is mas now less about skill?

These ques­tions feed in­to cur­rent de­bates about wan­ing cre­ativ­i­ty, feath­er-and-biki­ni for­mu­las for de­sign­ing cos­tumes and dis­ap­pear­ing skills in the dra­matur­gy of Car­ni­val. Do we know mas when we see it? What can we call mas to­day?

Per­haps an­oth­er way of read­ing this show is to see it as po­si­tioned in bold con­trast to the rise of se­quin-and-bead man­i­fes­ta­tions of mas.

The show's mer­it might re­side in its fore­ground­ing of as­pects of Car­ni­val that are not of­ten found in the lime­light–in its nudge to look in the shad­ows of the fes­ti­val where we might de­clare: that is mas!

More in­fo

Ma­ma Dis is Mas, an art ex­hi­bi­tion, ran from Feb­ru­ary 10�28 at the Gallery at Fine Art, cor­ner of War­ren and Ros­ali­no streets, Wood­brook.