Tere­sa White

This book is not for the faint of heart or light of head. It is not mealie-mouthed nor a provider of con­so­la­to­ry plat­i­tudes. In­deed, I un­der­went many Ho­r­a­tio mo­ments in its read­ing when I was un­com­fort­ably re­mind­ed of the lim­i­ta­tions of my own philo­soph­i­cal dream­ing.

My in­ten­tion is not to put off any po­ten­tial read­er. On the con­trary. I sim­ply wish to alert read­ers that a will­ing­ness to be chal­lenged, to think hard, to open head and open heart are moral pre­req­ui­sites. I do so be­cause we live in a world that seeks to dumb down every­thing, to re­duce and di­min­ish any tax­ing or in­tel­li­gent ideas. Over the past week, every­body has been talk­ing about AI de­stroy­ing the lit­er­ary land­scape, fool­ing judges of prizes, ren­der­ing the whole thing in­to pap­py-show and ma­m­aguy. But, oh God nah man - we still pos­sess our very hu­man qual­i­ties of in­dus­try, wit and dis­cern­ment. Let us em­brace the ap­pli­ca­tion of these hu­man qual­i­ties.

This is a book about the hu­man com­pul­sion to tran­scend ab­jec­tion and as­sert great­ness. It is root­ed in the speci­fici­ties of An­til­lean black­ness and all the trou­bled his­to­ry and present day re­al­i­ties that go with that, but it is a book for all of us. For we are all hu­man and we are all im­pli­cat­ed in these pat­terned re­la­tions and pre­vail­ing struc­tures. We are all in­volved in mankind and any man’s death, phys­i­cal or spir­i­tu­al, di­min­ish­es us all.

I fin­ished A Sense of Ar­rival ear­li­er this week. It has been my trav­el com­pan­ion for the past three weeks. I start­ed it be­fore I left T&T, it went with me to Guyana, then on­to the Venice Bi­en­nale, and is now here with me in a swel­ter­ing Lon­don. I don’t usu­al­ly trav­el with heavy (or hefty) books, but I don’t start new books un­til I have fin­ished the one I am read­ing. And, any­way, I couldn’t put it down.

What sur­prised me most was how this book walked along­side me in Venice. I hadn’t ex­pect­ed it to be whis­per­ing in my left ear as I con­tem­plat­ed the art show­cased at the old­est, largest, and, ar­guably, the most pres­ti­gious con­tem­po­rary art ex­hi­bi­tion in the world, an event that claims to be the “barom­e­ter of geopo­lit­i­cal and cul­tur­al shifts”.

Our first stop was a col­lec­tion of var­i­ous artists un­der a ban­ner ti­tled “Per­son­al Struc­tures”, with ex­hi­bi­tions at dif­fer­ent sites out­side of the main Bi­en­nale venues of the Ar­se­nale and Gi­a­r­di­ni. We were greet­ed by the El Sal­vado­ri­an, J Os­car Moli­na’s sculp­tures, “The Car­togra­phies of Dis­place­ment”, de­pict­ing the psy­chic dis­lo­ca­tion of (forced) mi­gra­tion. The sculpt­ed fig­ures were de­scribed as “marked by weight and re­straint,… car­ry­ing rather than ar­rival, en­durance rather than res­o­lu­tion” (Ale­jan­dra Car­bezas, Cu­ra­tor). And, thus, my ex­pe­ri­ence of the Bi­en­nale was im­me­di­ate­ly kicked off with the ques­tion of what con­sti­tutes “ar­rival”.

In Trinidad, when “we reach”, we have at­tained our des­ti­na­tion, ge­o­graph­i­cal and ma­te­r­i­al. It means that we stand as count­ed. It is, by de­f­i­n­i­tion, cel­e­bra­to­ry. If we are still hold­ing our prover­bial bag­gage, es­pe­cial­ly as un­re­leased en­forced en­cum­brance, we have lit­tle cause for cel­e­bra­tion and we cer­tain­ly can­not en­joy an un­fet­tered land­ing.

Our last stop was the Ba­hami­an Pavil­ion, “In An­oth­er Man’s Yard”, al­so out­side of the main venues. There, we wit­nessed a “posthu­mous col­lab­o­ra­tion” be­tween the re­cent­ly de­ceased, John Bea­dle, and Lavar Munroe. It formed what we in Trinidad would call a lavway, a call-and-re­sponse chant. Col­lec­tive­ly, they ex­plored mi­gra­tion and the cross­ing of ge­o­graph­ic, spir­i­tu­al, and an­ces­tral bound­aries. In Bea­dle’s Live Load, “Move­ment is at once sta­bilised and re­strained, fore­ground­ing itin­er­a­cy as an on­go­ing process and re­flect­ing on stalled pas­sage and on en­cum­bered mo­bil­i­ty as con­di­tions of transat­lantic slav­ery and mi­gra­tion.” In a con­trast­ing re­sponse, Munroe “reimag­ines the hero­ic jour­ney through an African and African di­as­poric lens.”

Be­yond this book­end­ing of mi­gra­to­ry ar­rival, An­til­lean ex­pe­ri­ences were al­so ho­n­oured by the Grena­di­an Pavil­ion’s “The Po­et­ics of Cor­re­spon­dence”. Caribbean is­land net­works, mem­o­ry, and cul­tur­al ex­changes were ex­plored through a va­ri­ety of me­dia, in­clud­ing mul­ti-lay­ered in­stal­la­tions and time-based works. Our lo­cal artist, Ed­ward Bowen, pre­sent­ed two sump­tu­ous land­scapes. [Won­der­ful evoca­tive stuff, yes, but at this point I must ask why in God’s name does Trinidad and To­ba­go not have its own pavil­ion? We have been ma­jor con­trib­u­tors to this di­a­logue for decades!]

I heard Kevin’s voice way be­yond the art of the Amer­i­c­as. In fact, it re­ver­ber­at­ed through a pavil­ion that was most de­lib­er­ate­ly ex­clud­ed from the Bi­en­nale - Gabrielle Go­liath’s El­e­gy. In this case, the South African Min­is­ter of Cul­ture deemed that the work’s lament on Gaza was too con­tentious and fund­ing was re­moved at the eleventh hour. That it was shown in­de­pen­dent­ly had a great deal to do with the sup­port Go­liath re­ceived from ma­jor in­ter­na­tion­al voic­es, no­tably Christi­na Sharpe, a pan­el­list at our 2024 Bo­cas Fes­ti­val and great friend of Kevin (he ac­knowl­edges her in­flu­ence in his book). Alas, when truths pre­vi­ous­ly held to be self-ev­i­dent, even at the depth of the mid-twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry civ­il rights strug­gles, be­come de­bat­able and con­tentious, the sit­u­a­tion is grave and un­con­scionable. This is now re­gres­sion to ar­rest­ed ar­rival.

I was al­so par­tic­u­lar­ly moved by Werewere Lik­ing. A Cameroon­ian-born writer, play­wright, per­former and vi­su­al artist, she is said to em­body “art in its en­tire­ty”. Her ex­hibits at the Bi­en­nale ad­dressed the is­sue of forced mi­gra­tion, black­ness, and a more lit­er­al non-ar­rival: “Lik­ing’s paint­ings and draw­ings give ex­pres­sion to her dreams and ru­mi­na­tions…. Lik­ing de­nounces the po­lit­i­cal in­equal­i­ties em­a­nat­ing from so-called il­le­gal mi­gra­tion, the wa­ter trans­formed in­to a ceme­tery for thou­sands of black bod­ies search­ing for hope and a bet­ter fu­ture.” (Marie He­lene Pereira, Cu­ra­tor).

Thus far, I have not men­tioned that A Sense of Ar­rival, which was pub­lished two years be­fore the Bi­en­nale, em­bod­ies a com­pa­ra­ble artis­tic holism. Like Lik­ing, Kevin cre­ates “art in its en­tire­ty”. The book is al­so rich in vi­su­al im­agery. It is lu­mi­nous with pho­tographs of ex­quis­ite ob­jects and tools of Kevin’s de­sign and mak­ing, ob­jects that cap­ture his ear­li­er mem­o­ries and the lives that touched him. I re­mem­ber go­ing to the open­ing night at Medul­la Gallery back in 2022 to see his ex­hi­bi­tion of these ob­jects as a pre­cur­sor to the book’s re­lease in 2024. The show was ti­tled “A Sense of Ar­rival: An Ex­hi­bi­tion of Es­says”.

If the Bi­en­nale is, in­deed, “the barom­e­ter of geopo­lit­i­cal and cul­tur­al shifts”, Kevin is clear­ly at the fore­front of a glob­al move­ment of the world’s most im­por­tant thinkers.

The book was again with me when I vis­it­ed the Chelsea Physic Gar­den and re-read the blurb about its founder, Sir Hans Sloane, made wealthy by Ja­maican colo­nial­ism and plan­ta­tion slav­ery, about the apothe­cary gar­den that ben­e­fit­ed much from Caribbean med­i­c­i­nal and botan­i­cal lore.

It was, yet again, most po­tent­ly there with me ear­li­er this week at the Hurvin An­der­son ret­ro­spec­tive at the Tate. Eng­lish-born of Ja­maican par­ents, Hurvin was deeply in­flu­enced by a sum­mer res­i­den­cy at Trinidad’s Caribbean Con­tem­po­rary Arts in the ear­ly 2000s, an ex­pe­ri­ence that per­vades his paint­ings. He de­picts our aching­ly beau­ti­ful nat­ur­al land­scapes and our hu­man di­ver­si­ty, whilst re­coil­ing from the in­her­ent vi­o­lence of our Caribbean so­ci­ety, how, for ex­am­ple, wrought iron and chain-link are fix­tures of our built land­scape; up­on ar­rival, one can clear­ly peer in­to what one is barred from.

I strong­ly be­lieve that the book should be taught as an aca­d­e­m­ic text in all uni­ver­si­ties deal­ing with the lega­cies of transat­lantic slav­ery, colo­nial­ism, dis­place­ment, colourism, clas­sism and post-Fou­cauldian po­lit­i­cal phi­los­o­phy. Pow­er is not straight­for­ward. It is not pure­ly a func­tion of race, class, cap­i­tal ac­cu­mu­la­tion and po­lit­i­cal struc­ture. It is nu­anced, mul­ti-di­rec­tion­al, self-en­forc­ing, self-per­pet­u­at­ing, mu­ta­ble, ad­dic­tive and per­ilous, in­ter­nalised and ex­ter­nalised. And there is more to us hu­mans who cre­ate these suf­fo­cat­ing sys­tems. There is al­ways, even in our bleak­est mo­ments, a promise of a beau­ti­ful hu­man mag­nif­i­cence. Sim­pli­fi­ca­tion is in­ef­fec­tu­al at best and detri­men­tal at worst - of­ten be­com­ing an­oth­er form of bor­ing tyran­ny, com­plete with the smat­ter­ing of wolves and far too many sheep.

Kevin con­cludes that part of ar­rival is the re­al­i­sa­tion that the Caribbean alone doesn’t or can­not hold us. I cer­tain­ly felt that on my re­cent pere­gri­na­tions. And this feel­ing will not aban­don me when I leave this one is­land of mine to re­turn to my oth­er is­land. Can a sense of ar­rival al­so be a sense of re­turn? On re­peat?

Tere­sa White is an In­de­pen­dent Ad­vi­sor on Cor­po­rate Gov­er­nance and Lead­er­ship. She is al­so an ex­ten­sive read­er and sup­port­er of the arts. Her life­long ca­reer in­ter­est is hu­man de­vel­op­ment and she be­lieves that pro­gres­sive so­ci­eties are built on eq­ui­ty, jus­tice, dis­course and un­fet­tered cre­ativ­i­ty.