OT­TO CAR­RING­TON

Ha­rande' Elie is chart­ing the way for him­self as an artist on the lo­cal scene, with not just con­tem­po­rary pieces but al­so with pho­tog­ra­phy and doc­u­men­tary-style pro­duc­tion.

With the pan­dem­ic af­fect­ing many artists glob­al­ly and most art gal­leries clos­ing their doors, this did not stop some artists from cre­at­ing. Elie was one of them, join­ing a col­lab­o­ra­tive at the Loft art gallery last month and launch­ing his art col­lec­tion at The T&T Art So­ci­ety last week. His col­lec­tion fo­cus­es on trau­ma.

Elie said that the ex­hi­bi­tion at the Art So­ci­ety runs un­til around De­cem­ber 4.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, Elie said, "Right now we are at Loft gallery host­ed by Dale Ramirez, and he had a vi­sion where he want­ed to give an op­por­tu­ni­ty to lo­cal artists who haven't been able to ex­hib­it be­cause of the pan­dem­ic, an op­por­tu­ni­ty to come back out and maybe pub­lic, get some work moved and ba­si­cal­ly get the art en­er­gy and vibe mov­ing again with­in the in­dus­try.

"I'm cur­rent­ly work­ing on a wider ex­hi­bi­tion at this point, and I de­cid­ed to put for­ward a piece that is very dear to me. The wider col­lec­tion, I think, has some con­tro­ver­sial is­sues and some very deep-seat­ed top­ics in it, but I felt at this junc­ture it was best to start with a piece that dealt with love. And there sim­ply isn't the whole no­tion of go­ing back out and re­con­nect­ing, I guess we're in love with­in the com­mu­ni­ty and get­ting things up and run­ning again."

While Elie deals with trau­ma in his lat­est art ex­hi­bi­tion, he be­lieves it is some­thing that is not dealt with as it should be by so­ci­ety.

"I don't think it's a top­ic that we deem the high­est pri­or­i­ty, par­tic­u­lar­ly when you're try­ing to make ends meet."

Elie's piece, For­tune Favours The Gold was on ex­hib­it at the Loft art gallery.

Ex­plain­ing the con­cept of the art­work from a spo­ken-word per­spec­tive, he said, "the piece in it­self start­ed with some spo­ken word...So the po­et­ry in essence is ac­tu­al­ly a con­ver­sa­tion be­tween the nar­ra­tor and Cu­pid as he's sip­ping on a drink at this bar, and he's look­ing at this fe­male look­ing at him. But as the nar­ra­tion goes, is she look­ing at me or past me?

"So it was him de­cid­ing, you know what, let me get up, find a way to make some sort of ap­proach and let for­tune favour and set­tle."

Look out for Elie's im­pact­ful art projects and col­lab­o­ra­tions on all so­cial me­dia plat­forms.