Artist Kvi­ta Mon­groo will be launch­ing her first col­lec­tion of pa­per col­lage and mixed me­dia art­work with Soft Box Gallery in St Clair from Oc­to­ber 1–15, 2022.

The show’s ti­tle “We swore…that we would nev­er leave the is­land” is an ex­cerpt from Derek Wal­cott’s po­em An­oth­er Life.

Mon­groo who is a Trinida­di­an/Cana­di­an artist shares, “For the ti­tle of my first so­lo ex­hi­bi­tion I was search­ing for the right words to en­com­pass the pow­er­ful ef­fect that a life in the West In­dies can have on you. Af­ter some re­search I came across a line in Wal­cott’s An­oth­er Life and was im­me­di­ate­ly struck by mem­o­ries of my grief at leav­ing Trinidad for the sec­ond time as an adult.

“In his prophet­ic words, ‘We swore…that we would nev­er leave the is­land…’ was the promise I made to my­self at that time: nev­er to for­get those enor­mous man­go tree roots in the pri­ma­ry school yard where we sat and spoke with the naïve cer­tain­ty that life could on­ly get more beau­ti­ful.”

Mon­groo cre­ates her mas­ter­ful col­lages through a care­ful process of tear­ing pa­per (no scis­sors) and lay­er­ing it to cre­ate se­mi ab­strac­tions of ob­jects and scenes on can­vas. She some­times in­cor­po­rates acrylic and spray paint for back­ground ef­fects.

Artist Kvita Mongroo at work in her garden.

While study­ing art at Na­pari­ma Girls’ High School, she took her ear­li­est in­spi­ra­tion from Jack­ie Hink­son and Lisa O’Con­nor, ad­mir­ing the ef­fort­less ap­pear­ance of light in their work. Like them, her cur­rent work pri­mar­i­ly fo­cus­es on still life and scenery in the West In­dies. She be­lieves that the light­ness of the en­riched but re­laxed at­mos­phere of the Caribbean is best cap­tured through the in­no­cence and im­pre­ci­sion of the pa­per col­lage medi­um. This metic­u­lous tech­nique al­lows for a de­cep­tive­ly sim­ple play of colour, pat­tern and tex­ture, re­sult­ing in the joy­ful mo­sa­ic that is is­land life. More than a decade of work has cul­mi­nat­ed in this, her first col­lec­tion.

Women in pa­per col­lage is some­thing Mon­groo would like to cel­e­brate as col­lage is an art form of­ten over­looked, stem­ming from artists as ear­ly as Mary De­laney (1700 – 1788) who as a British artist ar­guably pi­o­neered in­tri­cate pa­per col­lage though it was not ac­cept­ed as a se­ri­ous art form un­til Ma­tisse dab­bled in it al­most 100 years lat­er. The in­ter­na­tion­al­ly cel­e­brat­ed Kenyan artist Wangechi Mu­tu beg her ca­reer pri­mar­i­ly with pa­per col­lage cut from mag­a­zines fo­cused on the fe­male form.

There are oth­er fe­male artists clos­er to home like Mar­guerite Wyke (1908 – 1995) who in­clud­ed as­pects of pa­per col­lage in her mixed me­dia work, and To­nia St Cyr who works ex­ten­sive­ly with pa­per.

“I re­al­ly stand on the shoul­ders of these women who saw the frag­ile beau­ty and ver­sa­til­i­ty of pa­per as a medi­um. My work is al­ways evolv­ing and there is so much more I want to com­mu­ni­cate. I am es­pe­cial­ly con­cerned with is­sues of en­vi­ron­men­tal degra­da­tion and would hate for my work to be­come a mora­to­ri­um for what used to be. I hope that peo­ple leave the show with re­newed de­vo­tion to pro­tect­ing our col­lec­tive West In­di­an her­itage, whether we are talk­ing about the nat­ur­al land­scape, ar­chi­tec­ture or var­i­ous cel­e­bra­tions.

This ex­hi­bi­tion seeks to cap­ture the in­tan­gi­ble essence those of us lucky enough to be born in the is­land light know all about. To tru­ly ab­sorb the mag­ic of your ex­is­tence on a beau­ti­ful is­land is the chal­lenge I am pre­sent­ing,” she said.

Open­ing night re­cep­tion: Sat­ur­day Oc­to­ber 1, 6 pm-8.30 pm. The ex­hi­bi­tion runs from Oc­to­ber 1 to Oc­to­ber 15.