Bo­bi-Lee Dixon

Twen­ty-three-year-old Nneka Jones, a re­cent grad­u­ate of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Tam­pa in Flori­da, is the lat­est T&T na­tion­al to make the coun­try proud as her unique art­work was se­lect­ed by the long time em­i­nent, Amer­i­can cre­at­ed, Time Mag­a­zine for its Au­gust 31 to Sep­tem­ber 7, is­sue.

Last Thurs­day a gloat­ing Jones and founder of Art You Hun­gry took to her twit­ter page and tweet­ed: “Thank you @TIME and at @Phar­rell for this amaz­ing op­por­tu­ni­ty to pro­duce the hand-em­broi­dered cov­er art­work for this re­cent is­sue.”

Her stun­ning-yet con­tro­ver­sial work of the Amer­i­can flag sets the tone for a se­ries of con­ver­sa­tions and es­says fo­cused on the fos­ter­ing of a more un­bi­ased and even-hand­ed fu­ture for African-Amer­i­cans. Four-time Gram­my Award-win­ning record­ing artist and pro­duc­er Phar­rell Willams cu­rat­ed the se­ries.

Time In­ter­na­tion­al Art Di­rec­tor Vic­tor Williams sought Jones af­ter stum­bling on a pic­ture on her In­sta­gram page of her re­al­is­tic artis­tic por­tray­al of mur­dered un­armed African-Amer­i­can George Floyd who was killed on May 24 in Min­neapo­lis, Min­neso­ta by white ex-po­lice of­fi­cer Derek Chau­vin.

Guardian me­dia spoke with the Jones who’s mak­ing the rounds do­ing in­ter­views about her re­cent suc­cess and this is what she shared in Guardian Me­dia’s ques­tions and an­swers.

Ques­tion: Can you give us a lit­tle back­ground about your time here in Trinidad?

JONES: I grew up in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and al­so went to school at New­town R.C. Girls’ and Bish­op Anstey High School. These schools pro­vid­ed me with a sol­id foun­da­tion for the artis­tic jour­ney I am on now. The Trinida­di­an cul­ture was a strong in­flu­ence on the con­tent of my work at a very ear­ly age, par­tic­u­lar­ly be­cause we are a melt­ing pot of dif­fer­ent cul­tures and eth­nic­i­ties. Dur­ing my time at Bish­op Anstey, my art teach­ers played a large role in the sup­port and en­cour­age­ment, es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing the stress­ful time of CSEC and CAPE Ex­am­i­na­tions. This re­sult­ed in my achieve­ments of plac­ing first in the Caribbean for vi­su­al art dur­ing my CSEC ex­am­i­na­tions and ap­pear­ing on the Mer­it List twice for CAPE. I know now how im­por­tant it is to cher­ish those as­sign­ments and long nights of work while at high school be­cause it pro­vid­ed me with the in­de­pen­dence and dis­ci­pline to pur­sue a ca­reer as a full-time artist now and I am grate­ful to make my coun­try proud on a glob­al scale.

Ques­tion” How did your love af­fair with art be­gan and did you think it would ever get to the place it is to­day?

An­swer: I be­gan mak­ing art from as ear­ly as age five-years-old but on­ly start­ed call­ing my­self an artist at around age 12. My fam­i­ly, par­tic­u­lar­ly my old­er sis­ters, would rem­i­nisce on the days that they would open their school note­books and see that I had spent quite a few hours dec­o­rat­ing their pages with scrib­bles and stick fig­ures. So, for me, I be­lieve this all start­ed with my fas­ci­na­tion with doo­dling and sketch­ing, which then turned in­to a love for paint­ing and sculp­ture.

Once I start­ed re­fer­ring to my­self as an artist and de­vel­op­ing my tech­ni­cal skills, I knew that I had high hopes for my fu­ture and would al­so dream of be­ing a gallery own­er and hav­ing mul­ti­ple so­lo shows around the world. How­ev­er, part of me had doubts due to the stereo­types of artists and the in­abil­i­ty for most to sus­tain a long term ca­reer; but I was still de­ter­mined to work against this stereo­type.

Ques­tion: How would you de­scribe the con­ver­sa­tion of your art­work? What does it speak to and what in­spires those con­ver­sa­tions?

An­swer: Af­ter grad­u­at­ing from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Tam­pa and re­flect­ing on my body of work, I was able to con­fi­dent­ly call my­self an ac­tivist artist. This meant that I was not cre­at­ing work sim­ply for aes­thet­ics but in­tend­ing to com­mu­ni­cate a spe­cif­ic mes­sage and evoke emo­tion. My work fo­cus­es on high­light­ing so­cial and po­lit­i­cal in­jus­tices with hopes to cre­ate a shift to­wards more pos­i­tive change, both in Trinidad and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

This urge to cre­ate ac­tivist art comes from the ex­is­tence and rise of is­sues such as sex­u­al abuse, sex traf­fick­ing, colourism, racism and oth­er im­por­tant so­cial is­sues in so­ci­ety to­day.

Ques­tion: It was your artis­tic por­tray­al of George Floyd that got the at­ten­tion of Time Magzine. When you got the email from TIME, what was your first re­ac­tion? And de­scribe what tran­spired in the fol­low­ing days up to the sub­mit­tal of your piece?

An­swer: Re­ceiv­ing an email from Time’s art di­rec­tor Vic­tor Williams is not some­thing that I would have ever ex­pect­ed, es­pe­cial­ly af­ter just grad­u­at­ing from uni­ver­si­ty. I could not be­lieve that it was re­al and had to do some back­ground re­search to en­sure that he was who he said he was. I was ex­cit­ed once I re­alised that this was ac­tu­al­ly hap­pen­ing and was ful­ly on board to de­vel­op a piece for the is­sue, es­pe­cial­ly with top­ics re­lat­ing to equal­i­ty and racism that ex­ists in Amer­i­ca. How­ev­er, this was not just any piece of art­work, a lot of plan­ning and time went in­to de­vel­op­ing the im­age that re­sult­ed in on­ly 24 hours left for me to com­plete the fi­nal hand-em­broi­dered piece. This was the first hand-em­broi­dered piece that I would cre­ate in less than a week but I was de­ter­mined to get it done, pulling an “all-nighter” just like in high school and col­lege.

Ques­tion: Can you tell us the mean­ing of that piece and the mes­sage it con­veys?

An­swer: The piece is a sym­bol of op­ti­mism and di­rect in­ten­tion to re­shape Amer­i­ca for a bet­ter and brighter fu­ture. It speaks to all of the protests, march­es, deaths, in­equal­i­ties and racism that have been am­pli­fied over the past few months. The low­er por­tion of the flag is in­ten­tion­al­ly left in­com­plete with the nee­dle re­main­ing in the can­vas to re­mind us that this is a work in progress and that it takes time to re­shape a na­tion, but it will and must be done.

Ques­tion: Would you de­scribe this as your best work yet or the great­est op­por­tu­ni­ty you’ve had to date, in your art ca­reer?

An­swer This is def­i­nite­ly one of the great­est mile­stones I have achieved thus far in my art ca­reer. I am so thank­ful that Time de­cid­ed to choose me as there are many oth­er amaz­ing and es­tab­lished artists that they could have worked with. It gives me hope that I have cho­sen the right path and I am ex­cit­ed for the many oth­er op­por­tu­ni­ties to come and to con­tin­ue mak­ing my fam­i­ly and Trinidad and To­ba­go proud.

Ques­tion: You use the em­broi­dery tech­nique, why? Is this your sig­na­ture tech­nique? And what are some of the oth­er tech­niques you prac­tice?

An­swer: I dis­cov­ered em­broi­dery through an ex­per­i­men­tal class at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Tam­pa. It was my unique way of cre­at­ing a paint­ing with­out us­ing paint and I have stuck with this style ever since. It al­lows me to ex­press my­self in a very unique way and cap­ture the essence of a per­son us­ing dif­fer­ent length and colours of em­broi­dery thread. I al­so work in mixed me­dia us­ing oil and acrylic paint and oth­er ma­te­ri­als such as con­doms on can­vas.

Ques­tion: Where can your work be found?

An­swer: My work is cur­rent­ly be­ing dis­played at the Tam­pa Mu­se­um of Art in Tam­pa, Flori­da. And can be viewed via my web­site arty­ouhun­gry.com and In­sta­gram, Face­book and twit­ter @arty­ouhun­gry. These will up­date on up­com­ing ex­hi­bi­tions for the end of the year and 2021.

Ques­tion: If you were to paint the state of the world right now what would be the over­ar­ch­ing con­ver­sa­tion re­flect­ed on your can­vas?

An­swer: Paint­ing the state of the world right now would re­quire a com­po­si­tion that em­bod­ies re­flec­tion. Re­flec­tion on the chaos and tur­moil that has oc­curred through­out his­to­ry and in the present but with a lens that al­so re­flects the hope and faith of cre­at­ing change and how this is slow­ly tran­si­tion­ing to a more equal and sta­ble world and com­mu­ni­ty.

Ques­tion: In three words de­scribe art and its rel­e­vance to life.

An­swer: Raw, In­ten­tion­al and Truth­ful!