“It was like the cy­cle all over again with Ashan­ti (Ri­ley) and An­drea (Bharatt) and that same day, there was in­for­ma­tion on In­sta­gram that there would be a vig­il at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah. I told my dad as usu­al­ly he was the one go­ing around with me. We were there to cov­er it for An­drea and Ashan­ti, and I said we had to be there to cov­er it for Kei­thisha (Cud­joe).

“Peo­ple, I guess, were just try­ing to cope, and I start­ed tak­ing pho­tographs as I usu­al­ly would and this young la­dy and her young daugh­ter came to the area where all the can­dles were be­ing lit and I would call this the de­ci­sive mo­ment; the child ac­tu­al­ly stooped and stared in­to the flames, I guess to­tal­ly mes­merised by the fire and to me, it sym­bol­ised her fu­ture...

“As young women liv­ing in Trinidad and To­ba­go, we see all this vi­o­lence hap­pen­ing around us, and we can­not help but won­der how safe is it for us? We can­not live our lives in fear but at the same time, see­ing all of this vi­o­lence and ha­tred all around us I am pret­ty sure there’s some­thing that tells us we have to be afraid,” Gabriel­la Wyke told Sun­day Guardian in a re­cent in­ter­view.

The first artist from Trinidad and To­ba­go to cop first place in the Boynes Emerg­ing Artist Award, Wykes was de­scrib­ing how she came to cre­ate her win­ning piece “Fill the Streets”, a dig­i­tal pho­to­graph bring­ing gen­der-based vi­o­lence in­to fo­cus. Tak­en in ear­ly 2021, the day af­ter 21-year-old Kei­thisha Cud­joe’s body was found in the Heights of Aripo, “Fill the Streets” de­picts a lit­tle girl star­ing in­to a can­dle’s flame at a vig­il for Cud­joe at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah.

Con­cep­tu­alised by artist Chan­tal Boynes in 2019, the Boynes Emerg­ing Artist Award is an in­de­pen­dent on­line art com­pe­ti­tion to pro­mote and sup­port bud­ding artists world­wide. The award’s 6th Edi­tion win­ners were an­nounced on June 27 and Wyke al­so emerged as the 2nd artist from the Caribbean to place in the top three across the edi­tions. She will take up a three-month ful­ly-fund­ed artist res­i­den­cy in Sar­dinia, Italy, in 2023 as her prize.

Of­fered by the Boynes Emerg­ing Artist Award and its 6th Edi­tion part­ner No­ce­fres­ca, a res­i­den­cy pro­gramme bring­ing cre­atives to­geth­er from across the globe, the 6th Edi­tion prize pro­vides the chance to par­tic­i­pate in planned work­shops and train­ing ac­tiv­i­ties over­seen by artists, along with ac­com­mo­da­tion, art equip­ment and gear as well as help in de­vel­op­ing and or­gan­is­ing col­lec­tions and ex­hi­bi­tions. The prize al­so in­cludes dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing and oth­er op­por­tu­ni­ties for ex­po­sure.

Sixth Edition Boynes Emerging Artist Award winning artwork “Fill The Streets” (digital image) by Gabriella Wyke.

“The res­i­den­cy fea­tures the rur­al vil­lages of Sar­dinia is­land as a space for re­search and cre­ative ex­per­i­men­ta­tion, in­volv­ing both par­tic­i­pants and lo­cal com­mu­ni­ties in a cul­tur­al ex­change ex­pe­ri­ence,” the or­gan­is­ers said.

New York-based Cana­di­an artist Bryan Chad­wick took 2nd place and will re­ceive $US1,000 and mar­ket­ing ex­po­sure, while $US500 and mar­ket­ing ex­po­sure will be award­ed to third place win­ner British artist Anne Moses.

Wyke said she was “stunned” and “in awe” of her win, and is grate­ful to God, the award and No­ce­Fres­ca for be­liev­ing in her, and for her fam­i­ly’s sup­port. She is look­ing for­ward to meet­ing the peo­ple in Sar­dinia, learn­ing about the cul­ture, in­ter­act­ing with the women there and shar­ing their sto­ries.

Wyke felt that gen­der-based vi­o­lence oc­curred all too of­ten in T&T, in a seem­ing­ly nev­er-end­ing cy­cle. Be­yond send­ing con­do­lences and hold­ing vig­ils and protest­ing in the streets, she be­lieves this coun­try could do a lot more to ad­dress is­sues of vi­o­lence which have roots in the home. How we bring up our young men, how we ed­u­cate our young women and find­ing means to re­build the love and uni­ty in our peo­ple are im­por­tant, she said.

The artist said her im­ages high­light the every­day woman who can­not vo­calise her fears and pain per­haps be­cause she is afraid to. Ear­ly last year, the pho­tog­ra­ph­er start­ed the “Her Voice” project. For 50 days, Wyke cap­tured over 50 women who shared their sto­ries and feel­ings about gen­der-based vi­o­lence. She post­ed them on­line. The heavy gloom over the coun­try in the wake of the mur­ders of young women An­drea Bharatt and Ashan­ti Ri­ley had prompt­ed Wyke to try to give a voice to the or­di­nary, every­day woman from whom she felt the pub­lic need­ed to hear.

“While there was this up­heaval of vi­o­lence, I no­ticed we were hear­ing a lot from peo­ple in high­er po­si­tions like politi­cians, busi­ness peo­ple, peo­ple who have a plat­form, but not from the woman in the street, not from the woman who al­ways has to take a taxi home or from the woman who has to con­tend with con­struc­tion work­ers on the street, so I made it my mis­sion to give them that space to speak,” she said.

Wyke de­cid­ed to use one of the im­ages from the “Her Voice” se­ries to en­ter the Boynes com­pe­ti­tion. Apart from the ben­e­fit of ex­po­sure, she would use pho­tog­ra­phy to gain the per­spec­tive of women in Italy about the is­sue of vi­o­lence and was elat­ed that it all “fell in­to place” as she won.

At 26, Wyke is a free­lance pho­tog­ra­ph­er and has her own busi­ness–an ad-based com­pa­ny. How­ev­er, her artis­tic jour­ney start­ed as a child with pa­per and pen­cil. She re­called how her par­ents had mar­velled at her draw­ing of a stand­pipe in their yard when she was five or six, giv­ing her the en­cour­age­ment to take up art.

She got her first glimpse in­to the world of pho­tog­ra­phy while her fam­i­ly was sta­tioned on a mil­i­tary base in Toron­to in 2010. She learnt about old­er ana­logue pho­tog­ra­phy where a chem­i­cal process changes pro­ject­ed light in­to a pho­to­graph and pin­hole (most ba­sic con­cept of a cam­era) pho­tog­ra­phy, dark room de­vel­op­ment and al­so the more mod­ern dig­i­tal pho­tog­ra­phy where im­ages can be viewed in­stant­ly.

In 2017, she de­cid­ed to pur­sue a pho­tog­ra­phy de­gree at Sa­van­nah Col­lege of Art and De­sign in At­lanta and start­ed see­ing art as more than an ex­pres­sion of beau­ty but a ve­hi­cle for change. Through her cam­era lens, she ex­plores sub­jects like so­cial change, and so­cial jus­tice, par­tic­u­lar­ly re­gard­ing mar­gin­alised groups such as black men of­ten seen as trou­ble­mak­ers. Her work al­so high­lights gen­der-based vi­o­lence.

Founder and Di­rec­tor of the Boynes Emerg­ing Artist Award, Chan­tal Boynes said of Wyke’s win, “Af­ter six edi­tions of the Boynes Emerg­ing Artist Award, to fi­nal­ly see a young emerg­ing artist from my own coun­try not on­ly be­come a fi­nal­ist but place first, fills me with so much pride. It is tru­ly amaz­ing and Gabriel­la is re­al­ly an em­bod­i­ment of what this award was cre­at­ed to do, sup­port and give an in­ter­na­tion­al plat­form to tal­ent­ed emerg­ing artists.”

Boynes, along with the di­rec­tor of No­ce­fres­ca Francesca Sas­su, was ex­cit­ed about Wyke’s pas­sion and suc­cess in her projects and en­cour­aged bud­ding artists world­wide to par­tic­i­pate in the com­pe­ti­tion as an op­por­tu­ni­ty to dis­play their tal­ent and net­work with oth­er artists.

The 7th Edi­tion of the com­pe­ti­tion will wel­come sub­mis­sions from Au­gust 1, 2022. Stay tuned for more in­for­ma­tion from Ju­ly 11, 2022, on the award web­site www.boy­ne­sartistaward.com

Another image by Gabriella Wyke “Get Home Safely”.

Q&A with Gabriel­la

What sub­ject mat­ter do you pre­fer to ex­plore and why?

Top­ics that deal with so­cial change, so­cial jus­tice for mar­gin­alised groups like black men, al­so prej­u­dice and gen­der-based vi­o­lence.

Why? Be­cause I’ve al­ways had this need to speak up for those who can’t speak for them­selves be­cause I be­lieve that no mat­ter who we are every­one should have the chance to be heard and if there’s some form of in­jus­tice tak­ing place at the very least, it should be dis­cussed, pub­li­cised. Of­ten­times, like racism, gen­der-based vi­o­lence gets swept un­der the rug. It’s on­ly be­cause of so­cial me­dia that it’s been put on blast or some­times there’s so much of it that it caus­es us to be­come de­sen­si­tised to it.

How did you come to en­ter the Boynes com­pe­ti­tion?

As an emerg­ing artist, ap­ply­ing to op­por­tu­ni­ties like this is some­thing I of­ten try to do be­cause it gives you that ex­po­sure. In this case, the Boynes Emerg­ing Artist Award is an in­ter­na­tion­al award which would mean that sto­ries I would usu­al­ly share would be seen on a larg­er scale and there­fore the mes­sage would get out.

I saw the ad­ver­tise­ment more than three times and saw it as a sign to go out on faith be­cause at the time I did not even have the fi­nances to ap­ply. I told God this is some­thing that I re­al­ly want­ed to do and He pro­vid­ed the mon­ey.

I ap­plied to­tal­ly on faith hop­ing this would be the next step in my ca­reer be­ing able to do an artist res­i­den­cy in Italy would have been an in­valu­able ex­pe­ri­ence. I would have had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to work in a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent en­vi­ron­ment and, of course, for an artist, the en­vi­ron­ment af­fects our work, how it grows, and who it is seen by and so this is an op­por­tu­ni­ty that I would def­i­nite­ly have want­ed to take.

And just for the fact of be­ing able to take the “Her Voice” project in­ter­na­tion­al­ly...it was some­thing I had plans for and it was on­ly when I read the con­tents of the award I re­alised that this was my op­por­tu­ni­ty to take “Her Voice” fur­ther.

How did you se­lect the par­tic­u­lar piece, “Fill The Streets”?

As part of the “Her Voice” project, I felt this im­age would be the per­fect segue from women shar­ing their is­sues to women who can­not nec­es­sar­i­ly share. Be­cause this girl, she’s prob­a­bly four or five and may not be able to ar­tic­u­late as well as an adult. “Fill the Streets” just sym­bol­is­es that this cy­cle can­not con­tin­ue.

The piece is dig­i­tal, not print­ed. Any rea­son why?

The pho­to is dig­i­tal for now. I be­lieve it will be print­ed at some point but be­cause of the day and age we’re in right now, I find that so­cial me­dia is an ef­fec­tive means of get­ting the mes­sage out quick­ly to as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble, es­pe­cial­ly with the pan­dem­ic I would have shared a lot of my art on­line to have a plat­form. It is some­thing I’ve con­tin­ued to do. How­ev­er, if I do have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to ex­hib­it it in a gallery, I would be hap­py to print it as large as I could be­cause see­ing an im­age in print af­fects the view­er dif­fer­ent­ly. The com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween you and the im­age is more im­pact­ful.

Is there any rea­son why you shoot in black and white?

Black and white pho­tog­ra­phy I’ve found has a very time­less qual­i­ty about it. You can nev­er re­al­ly tell when the pho­to­graph was tak­en there­fore mak­ing it all the more rel­e­vant. I al­so have al­ways as­so­ci­at­ed black and white pho­tographs with a sig­nif­i­cant lev­el of im­por­tance. For ex­am­ple, black and white pho­tographs have al­ways taught us about his­to­ry and they are al­so com­mon­ly seen in the news­pa­pers. When­ev­er view­ers see my pho­tographs I want there to be a sense of ur­gency in their minds, a sense that prompts them to pay clos­er at­ten­tion to the sub­ject with­out the dis­trac­tion that coloured pho­tog­ra­phy some­times cre­ates.

Any­thing else you would like to add?

To oth­er young emerg­ing artists out there, all that you are think­ing about now is not con­fined to your dreams. They have the pow­er to be­come a re­al­i­ty; just con­tin­ue to be­lieve in your­self, in the gifts that God put in you. And re­al­ly iden­ti­fy the pur­pose for which you have those gifts and go at it 110 per cent. You nev­er know how it could change the world.