To­day marks the cul­mi­na­tion the cel­e­bra­tion of the 102nd an­niver­sary of the city of Port-of-Spain. For the first time, a vi­su­al arts ex­hi­bi­tion was in­clud­ed among the com­mem­o­ra­tive events. MAR­SHA PEARCE re­views the show for the Sun­day Arts Sec­tion.

Where one might see lack, oth­ers see promise. In his 1992 No­bel lec­ture, Derek Wal­cott gave voice to his vi­sion of the city of Port-of-Spain, see­ing it as a cre­ative well­spring. "On a heat-stoned af­ter­noon in Port-of-Spain, some al­ley white with glare, with love vine spilling over a fence, palms and a hazed moun­tain ap­pear around a cor­ner," he writes. Yet for Wal­cott, there is more be­yond a sur­face read­ing of that scene.

"It is hard for me to see such empti­ness as des­o­la­tion. It is that pa­tience that is the width of An­til­lean life," he adds. The "pa­tience" to which Wal­cott refers is the tenac­i­ty or stay­ing pow­er of the Caribbean–a pow­er that per­me­ates its cities and cran­nies.

It is a pow­er cel­e­brat­ed in this year's 102nd an­niver­sary of the city of Portof- Spain and ac­knowl­edged with a dis­play of art­works. Un­der the theme A City in Pos­i­tive Tran­si­tion, the Old Fire Sta­tion ad­ja­cent to the Na­tion­al Li­brary, cor­ner of Hart and Aber­crom­by Streets, was trans­formed in­to a gallery space with an ar­ray of two and three­d­i­men­sion­al pieces.

How to present the evo­lu­tion of a place? How to de­scribe its pas­sages, rit­u­als and per­son­al­i­ties with­out giv­ing a cloy­ing nar­ra­tive?

The in­clu­sion of Christo­pher Co­zi­er's Frag­ment was a rel­e­vant, ro­bust choice. The work is a piece of clay found at the site of one of the build­ings de­stroyed dur­ing the at­tempt­ed coup of 1990. On one side of the frag­ment, Co­zi­er paints the sur­ren­der of coup leader Yasin Abu Bakr. On the oth­er side, he gives a por­trait of Dr Er­ic Williams, T&T's first prime min­is­ter. The dis­turb­ing work of­fers two key fig­ures bound up in the rule and di­rec­tion of the city and wider na­tion.

Co­zi­er's Frag­ment was suit­ably lo­cat­ed so that it stood in di­a­logue with Joshua Lue Chee Kong's new work The Red House Has Land­ed and Carlisle Chang's Un­ti­tled oil on can­vas piece dat­ed 1965. Lue Chee Kong's seat-of­par­lia­mentcum- space­ship trig­gered thoughts of a colo­nial his­to­ry and the no­tion of self-gov­er­nance as an alien idea (does the gov­ern­ment come in peace?).

Its fu­tur­is­tic aes­thet­ic al­so prompt­ed au­di­ences to think about a Port-of-Spain of to­mor­row. In con­trast, Chang's work steepedthoughts in the past. Chang had a great im­pact on art and the city, hav­ing done sev­er­al pub­lic mu­rals, in­clud­ing those at the Port-of-Spain City Hall, the Cen­tral Bank, and Hilton Trinidad.

An­oth­er no­table link in the show was the dis­play of Pe­ter Min­shall's sketch­es for a chil­dren's Car­ni­val band dat­ed 1986, the wire-bend­ing tech­nique seen in Su­san Day­al's Third Eye Flow­er­ing and Wendy Nanan's pa­pi­er m�ch� ba­by Kr­ish­na car­ry­ing a dou­bles in one hand and an enam­el cup with a drop of oil in the oth­er. These pieces put a spot­light on the street the­atre that pos­sess­es the city each year and some of the ma­te­ri­als and meth­ods of cos­tume fab­ri­ca­tion.

The work of Day­al and Nanan al­so of­fered re­flec­tion on an in­tan­gi­ble di­men­sion of city life, with Day­al's third eye em­pha­sis­ing con­scious­ness or per­cep­tion be­yond or­di­nary sight –a see­ing of po­ten­tial–and Nanan's Kr­ish­na with cherub wings high­light­ing a spir­it of uni­ty or syn­cretism.

The cu­ra­to­r­i­al choice of in­cor­po­rat­ing Car­ni­val was to be ex­pect­ed. What was miss­ing, how­ev­er, was the in­jec­tion of the In­do-Caribbean fes­ti­val of Hosay (Isa­iah James Bood­hoo's art comes to mind), which is al­so a sig­nif­i­cant part of the city's iden­ti­ty.

Like Co­zi­er's Frag­ment, the pres­ence of Richard Mark Rawl­in's Chi­nese Work­er piece al­so kept the ex­hi­bi­tion from be­ing over-sen­ti­men­tal. His art was a re­minder of the im­mi­grants who al­leged­ly worked un­der poor con­di­tions to re­vi­talise the city, in­clud­ing projects such as the con­struc­tion of the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (Na­pa)–a build­ing thought­ful­ly in­clud­ed in the ex­hib­it by way of Don­ald "Jack­ie" Hink­son's paint­ing ti­tled All In­clu­sive.

Oth­er fit­ting se­lec­tions were Abi­gail Hadeed's pho­to­graph of a pan yard and Shouter Bap­tist woman, Nanan's sketch­es of crick­et at the Queen's Park Oval, Reah Lee Sing's paint­ing of the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah North (Lee Sing is the wife of a for­mer city may­or), Dean Arlen's Five Men Dis­cussing Trans Pol­i­tics and Niko­lai Noel's Mer­cury im­age cre­at­ed for the NGC Bo­cas Lit Fest (a lit­er­ary fes­ti­val held an­nu­al­ly in the city since 2011).

Ed­ward Bowen's Bird and Lizard un­der­scored our fau­na as a req­ui­site fea­ture of the city's ecosys­tem. Sarah Knight's Two Face showed con­sid­er­a­tion of the ten­sions of ex­is­tence for women liv­ing in so­ci­ety. In her mixed me­dia piece, a young woman wears a de­mure dress dec­o­rat­ed with re­peat­ing im­ages of a fe­male fig­ure clutch­ing her crotch with legs spread. The im­ages al­so ex­tend to the woman's hands.

Mar­lon Dar­beau's peera, a rein­ter­pre­ta­tion of a home-made wood­en bench tra­di­tion­al­ly used for cook­ing and oth­er dai­ly ac­tiv­i­ties, was a sym­bol­ic bridg­ing of time and a strong el­e­ment of meta­mor­pho­sis, which con­nect­ed to the show's fo­cus on the idea of tran­si­tion.

Rodell Warn­er's frac­tal pat­terns in his piece Flot­sam al­so pow­er­ful­ly spoke to the no­tion of flux, while Es­ther Grif­fith's paint­ing of an up­turned face not on­ly ra­di­at­ed with an air of op­ti­mism but al­so re­in­forced a sense of shifts and mo­tion with its en­er­getic brush­strokes.

The ex­hi­bi­tion pro­vid­ed ac­cess to the idea of tran­si­tion on mul­ti­ple, in­ter­twined lev­els: hu­man, eco­log­i­cal, po­lit­i­cal and in­fra­struc­tur­al–in both fig­u­ra­tive and ab­stract ap­proach­es. This at­ten­tion to de­vel­op­ment and change mat­ters to how Port-of-Spain is con­sid­ered and en­vi­sioned.

In Wal­cott's lec­ture he makes a claim about Caribbean cities. "Ours are not cities in the ac­cept­ed sense, but no one wants them to be. They dic­tate their own pro­por­tions," he says. Is Wal­cott's state­ment true to­day? What ex­act­ly is meant by a pos­i­tive tran­si­tion?

Are Port-of-Spain's pro­por­tions tak­ing shape in the im­age and like­ness of oth­er cities or in its own way? Hink­son's All In­clu­sive paint­ing gave au­di­ences pause. In it he jux­ta­pos­es the steel and glass of Na­pa with the Re­nais­sance style of the Roy­al Vic­to­ria In­sti­tute, the build­ing that hous­es the Na­tion­al Mu­se­um.

A bmo­bile bill­board stands in the land­scape as the new green­ery block­ing a por­tion of the fo­liage in the back­ground. Giv­en the lay­out of the show, it is the last piece au­di­ences would see, stir­ring much ques­tions while the city hummed and whirled out­side the Old Fire Sta­tion walls.

The strength of this brief show was found­ed on its abil­i­ty to com­mem­o­rate with­out be­ing gid­dy; to en­cour­age in­quiry rather than blind ac­cep­tance.

It is a pity the City Day art ex­hi­bi­tion on­ly ran for a few hours, giv­ing lit­tle op­por­tu­ni­ty for more pub­lic en­gage­ment. The dis­play was held on the evening of June 8, and was cu­rat­ed by Mar­tin Mout­tet and Ge­of­frey MacLean of Medul­la Art Gallery.