For sisters Casillan Caberrea and Esther Cupid, art has been key to their rediscovery of an almost forgotten Warao heritage. Both Caberrea and Cupid spoke of their "full-blooded Warao" mother at their one-day exhibit, The Inaugural Native Warao Indian Art Exhibition, at the San Fernando Hill on Friday. The pieces-four paintings and more than 50 pieces of pottery-were simple, using mostly earth tones and primary colours. Repetitive designs, dots, symbols representing the sun, the moon, the stars and the seas were evident in nearly every piece. The simplicity may be reminiscent of the Warao-influenced upbringing in Palo Seco that Caberrea and Cupid described. "We grew up on a farm, hunting and fishing, and we were always told stories about our grandparents coming from Venezuela," said Caberrea.
Caberrea said her grandparents came to Trinidad in the early 1920s to work in the cocoa fields. Her family was just one of many Amerindian families who continued to move between the islands as Nicholas J Saunders points out in The Peoples of the Caribbean: "In some parts of Trinidad there is almost certainly some blood of the Venezuelan Warao Amerindian who up until 1930 would journey to Trinidad as their ancestors had done for millennia in order to trade parrots, hunting dogs and hammocks." Cupid said she and her siblings only recently grasped the full meaning of their ancestry. "We always knew our mother was full-blooded Warao Indian, but it wasn't relevant to us at that point in time. After we joined the community and started learning about the history, we realised how important it is and as that happened our work started to develop more," related Cupid, who added that she and Caberrea learned to draw and paint from their father.
Caberrea also designs costumes for children's mas bands. The community Cupid spoke of is the Warao Community of the southwestern peninsula. Last year, the organisation began agitating for constitutional recognition as the first people of T&T-they came before Christopher Columbus and, they say, before other Amerindian tribes. Earlier this year the group worked with the UWI Department of Creative and Festival Arts on Nation Dance, at even in which Caberrea performed in a play, also on the San Fernando Hill. Most pieces were untitled but Cupid-who signs artwork "Jan"-wrote a poem to frame the collection:
Earth Song
Journey Through Earth Songs
With beauty before us, now we walk
With beauty behind us, now we walk...
With beauty flowing through us, now we walk
On a path of peace with all the creations of the Great Spirit
Even the space for the exhibition was chosen because the San Fernando Hill is an earth god of the Warao people, said Caberrea. The exhibition was generally thematically cohesive, but the pieces which were representational rather than abstract seemed to be unrelated. However, Cupid said although the pieces articulate some part of Warao history, her piece Deep Divine depicted a clear blue sky ,which she said represented "the crossing of the water, the journey between Venezuela, the Orinoco Delta and Trinidad, a reflection of the water and its spirituality."
To see more of their work contact Casillan Caberrea at 352-8460 or Esther Cupid at 307-4726.