Fay­ola K J Fras­er

“Cre­ativ­i­ty and the act of cre­ativ­i­ty are hu­man-on­ly skills. We have been cre­at­ing ever since cave draw­ings.” Tes­sa Alexan­der (Tes­sa Alexan­der Sloane-Seale) is a pro­fes­sion­al artist by trade, but her work, along with the na­ture and sub­ject mat­ters of her art, has made her a his­to­ri­an, a so­ci­ol­o­gist and a busi­ness­woman all in one.

“I’ve al­ways done art and al­ways want­ed to be an artist,” she says, re­flect­ing on her cre­ative jour­ney as she shows her art lo­cal­ly in her first so­lo ex­hi­bi­tion since be­fore the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. The show ran from April 2 to 5.

Af­ter grad­u­at­ing from Bish­op Anstey High School, Tes­sa Alexan­der pur­sued an As­so­ciate’s De­gree in Fash­ion De­sign, hav­ing been dis­cour­aged from for­mal­ly study­ing art. She was of­ten met with the fa­mil­iar ques­tion: “What can one do with art?”

In 1998, up­on get­ting preg­nant with her first child, Tes­sa Alexan­der be­gan vi­su­al jour­nalling, keep­ing records of the stages of her preg­nan­cy and cre­at­ing a se­ries on the chang­ing body. When her fam­i­ly and friends saw her work, they en­cour­aged her to ex­hib­it it, which she did, and the rest was his­to­ry, as she has been steadi­ly mak­ing art and ex­hibit­ing it ever since.

As a self-taught, fe­male pro­fes­sion­al artist, she has faced many ob­sta­cles, some of them be­ing in­ter­nal in­se­cu­ri­ties that came with the ter­ri­to­ry. “Be­ing a fe­male and a woman who was hav­ing chil­dren, there were many sac­ri­fices I had to make,” she says. “Of­ten times I had to put art on the back burn­er.”

Con­sid­er­ing that art is not a nine-to-five cor­po­rate job where she would ex­it the home and be oth­er­wise en­gaged, she was not able to take many op­por­tu­ni­ties as she fo­cused her ef­forts on rais­ing her three chil­dren.

When her chil­dren got old­er, Tes­sa Alexan­der was bet­ter poised to dive in­to the well of her cre­ative tal­ent and opened an art stu­dio in Fer­nan­des Com­pound. She al­so be­gan “to push” her­self in oth­er ways and at­tend­ed an artist res­i­den­cy in In­dia, a women’s art work­shop in Kenya, and pur­sued her mas­ter’s de­gree in Cul­tur­al Stud­ies at UWI.

For her fi­nal the­sis project for her mas­ter’s, she re­searched how moth­er­hood and moth­er­ing im­pact­ed fe­male artists, do­ing in­ter­views with fe­male artists in T&T. “I learnt that their jour­neys were sim­i­lar to mine,” she says. Re­count­ing her find­ings, she said, “The way so­ci­ety views moth­ers is very dif­fer­ent. And it’s very dif­fi­cult to be a se­ri­ous artist and make a large body of work while hav­ing chil­dren.”

These find­ings spurred her in­to do­ing a his­tor­i­cal in­ves­ti­ga­tion that un­der­lined what is now her cur­rent body of work. She found that be­ing an artist, work­ing tire­less­ly in a stu­dio alone, is large­ly a West­ern con­struct and be­gan to delve in­to how women in Glob­al South so­ci­eties, specif­i­cal­ly ones that con­sti­tut­ed a large part of her her­itage and our col­lec­tive her­itage as a na­tion, made art from time im­memo­r­i­al.

“Their art isn’t al­ways called art,” she dis­cov­ered. “Some­times it’s re­ferred to as craft, or folk art, or tra­di­tion­al art.” Armed with her sis­ter’s DNA re­sults, which sig­nalled that their an­ces­tors hailed from the Ibo and Bi­hari com­mu­ni­ties of West Africa and East In­dia, re­spec­tive­ly, she de­cid­ed to bring to light the art prac­tices spe­cif­ic to the women of those places.

The sub­ject of her his­tor­i­cal deep dive be­came Uli Art (made by Ibo women) and Mad­hubani Art (made by Bi­hari women). Tes­sa Alexan­der felt an urge to bring this art for­ward, as “what we were taught was colo­nial his­to­ry and colo­nial art; it’s dis­em­pow­er­ing. I want­ed to study what my peo­ple did, to show­case the com­plex, cre­ative so­ci­eties that ex­ist­ed un­til the vi­o­lence of coloni­sa­tion de­stroyed a lot of that.”

This de­colo­nial lens in­flu­enced her own art ex­hi­bi­tion, be­ing dis­played at present at the Art So­ci­ety, as she de­vel­oped a hy­brid art aes­thet­ic, re­claim­ing an­ces­tral vi­su­al cul­ture that speaks to our own her­itage and ex­pe­ri­ences.

Each se­ries pre­sent­ed in her ex­hi­bi­tion, al­though dif­fer­ent in in­spi­ra­tion, is root­ed in ho­n­our­ing and high­light­ing women and their con­tri­bu­tion to our so­ci­ety while be­ing in­formed by her study of Uli and Mad­hubani prin­ci­ples.

Tak­ing very se­ri­ous­ly her role as a fe­male artist, Tes­sa Alexan­der us­es her sto­ry to in­spire young fe­male artists on their jour­ney. To young artists, who may be dis­cour­aged by oth­ers from pur­su­ing their art, she says, “If you are cre­ative, it is the job of a cre­ative per­son to be cre­ative. Don’t let so­ci­ety dis­cour­age you, and keep keep­ing on. Cre­ativ­i­ty is an in­trin­sic part of us.”

Now en­gaged in a PhD pro­gramme as two of her daugh­ters have left home to live in Toron­to, she con­tin­ues to ag­gres­sive­ly pur­sue her re­search. At the same time, Tes­sa Alexan­der has been mak­ing work and ex­hibit­ing around the world, with her work show­cased in In­dia, Ro­ma­nia, Lon­don, Nige­ria, Los An­ge­les, at an art gallery in Martha’s Vine­yard, and the Prism Art Fair in Mi­a­mi Art Week.

Her work be­ing shown in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, her pieces be­ing col­lect­ed by ma­jor art col­lec­tors, and her pieces be­ing dis­played in books and TV shows have been high­lights of her ca­reer in art.

In this, her first art ex­hi­bi­tion since pre-COVID, she has brought to­geth­er snip­pets of her work that tell a co­he­sive sto­ry. The sto­ry is a re­think­ing of his­to­ries (her­sto­ries), which has been the cen­tral work of Tes­sa Alexan­der’s ca­reer.

Har­ness­ing her cre­ative abil­i­ty through her work, she has used her tal­ent to em­pow­er women through art and al­so ac­knowl­edge women and fe­male com­mu­ni­ties’ con­tri­bu­tions to so­ci­ety.