In the qui­et neigh­bour­hood of Fed­er­a­tion Park, the pul­sat­ing heart of Car­ni­val now beats from with­in the walls of the Art So­ci­ety of Trinidad and To­ba­go head­quar­ters. Cur­rent­ly on dis­play is Din­go­lay, an ex­hi­bi­tion that trans­forms the gallery space in­to a vi­brant trib­ute to the colour, ca­dence and cul­tur­al pow­er of Trin­ba­go Car­ni­val.

Fea­tur­ing 36 ex­cep­tion­al works, Din­go­lay cap­tures the spir­it of a fes­ti­val that is at once an­ces­tral and con­tem­po­rary, deeply root­ed yet con­stant­ly evolv­ing.

The ti­tle it­self is evoca­tive. To “din­go­lay” is to move freely, joy­ful­ly and with­out re­straint—a fit­ting de­scrip­tion for both Car­ni­val and the cre­ative ex­pres­sion on dis­play. Each piece in the ex­hi­bi­tion of­fers a dis­tinct in­ter­pre­ta­tion of that free­dom, re­flect­ing the per­son­al lens through which artists ex­pe­ri­ence the sea­son.

Din­go­lay un­der­scores the en­dur­ing con­nec­tion be­tween vi­su­al art and Car­ni­val. In this ex­hi­bi­tion, that re­la­tion­ship is re­newed, as con­tem­po­rary artists rein­ter­pret fa­mil­iar scenes through mod­ern tech­niques and ex­per­i­men­tal forms.

The re­sult is a gallery ex­pe­ri­ence that feels al­most son­ic in its in­ten­si­ty. Though no mu­sic plays, one can al­most hear the rolling thun­der of bass pans and the bright chat­ter of tenors. The eye trav­els from can­vas to can­vas much like a mas­quer­ad­er moves through the streets—paus­ing, sway­ing, rev­el­ling.

Din­go­lay runs un­til Fri­day. Gallery hours are from 12 noon to 6 pm. For those seek­ing a dif­fer­ent van­tage point on Car­ni­val—one that trades the road for re­flec­tion with­out los­ing the rev­el­ry—this ex­hi­bi­tion of­fers a com­pelling stop on the cul­tur­al cal­en­dar.