Tere­sa White

“Every­thing you see rep­re­sents a tiny sliv­er of the elec­tro­mag­net­ic spec­trum. Most of the uni­verse is hid­den from view, even the nor­mal stuff, not just the mys­te­ri­ous dark mat­ter no one yet un­der­stands. The right tele­scopes are tech­no­log­i­cal­ly ca­pa­ble of see­ing most of the light we can­not, but Earth gets in the way.”

From Our Moon, How Earth’s Ce­les­tial Com­pan­ion Trans­formed the Plan­et, Guid­ed Evo­lu­tion, and Made Us Who We Are, by Re­bec­ca Boyle

Things of­ten hide in plain sight; we fail to see them not just be­cause Earth gets in the way, but be­cause our world­ly bi­as­es and prej­u­dices do.

Hav­ing come back from an ex­tend­ed week­end on Trinidad’s glo­ri­ous North Coast, I am re­mind­ed of an in­ci­dent in­volv­ing an old fam­i­ly friend who was vis­it­ing from Bar­ba­dos many years ago. We had gone in sev­er­al cars for a day at Yarra. Me­an­der­ing over that ver­dant North Coast Road, we came to the dif­fused and dap­pled sun­light of Yarra Riv­er’s bam­boo arch­es and round-leaved teaks (one of my favourite spots on this plan­et), and then we were at the beach.

Our car had been full of “ooohs” and “aahs”, which I al­so ex­pect­ed from the oth­ers, on­ly to be greet­ed with a: “My God! You have to dri­ve so long to get to the beach in Trinidad!” Ste­ups.  In­deed, we do not re­gard the world with the same eyes.

To mag­ni­fy this point, Mar­sha Pearce has se­lect­ed eight large-scale paint­ings by the high­ly ac­cred­it­ed West In­di­an artist Ed­ward Bowen, and has al­so in­vit­ed six ac­cred­it­ed writ­ers for their imag­i­na­tive re­spons­es: Bar­bara Jenk­ins, Amil­car Sanatan, Sharon Mil­lar, Kevin Jared Ho­sein, Eliz­a­beth Wal­cott-Hack­shaw, and Por­tia Sub­ran.

Through the process of ekphra­sis, each sto­ry­teller re­flects on the art’s “ac­tion”, am­pli­fy­ing its mean­ing, and tak­ing us be­yond what is pri­ma fa­cie, be­fore us, in­to the realm of the ‘more-things-in-heav­en-and-earth’.

Bowen de­picts the fa­mil­iar, but calls up­on us to seek the un­ex­pect­ed; he refers to this dis­rup­tion as go­ing in­to “that black light void”.  Pearce, be­ing both a cu­ra­tor and a schol­ar, is an ed­u­ca­tor. With a fo­cus on the Caribbean, she too is ask­ing us to look dif­fer­ent­ly, em­brace dark­ness and aban­don our as­sump­tions.

The sto­ry­tellers’ ekphras­tic re­spons­es are per­for­ma­tive, re-en­act­ing our cul­tur­al­ly ap­pro­pri­ate lavway. The vi­su­al im­age is lift­ed from the can­vas in­to the writ­ten word and on­to the page. The read­er en­joys a con­ver­sa­tion­al chant of call and re­sponse with the read­er’s re­ac­tion fur­ther­ing that in­ter­locu­tion, giv­ing all a voice and the op­por­tu­ni­ty to ex­press truth.

Bowen’s dip­tych, Val­ley, in­spires Bar­bara Jenk­ins in “Hinge” to tell of the com­plex so­cial re­la­tions aris­ing out of Trinidad’s his­tor­i­cal land own­er­ship, the mon­eti­sa­tion of which de­pend­ed on a mod­el of pa­ter­nal­ism and forced labour. This is in­dis­putably an ad­ver­sar­i­al work sys­tem, yet op­pos­ing lines are not clear­ly drawn. When you look more close­ly, fa­mil­ial oblig­a­tions join us all at the hip. Bowen’s Kneel ap­pro­pri­ates the icon­ic ges­ture of tak­ing the knee.  

The fig­ure is hold­ing a stick (ap­po­site for lavway) that is res­olute­ly and lit­er­al­ly as­sert­ing a stake in the ground.

Amil­car Sanatan’s re­sponse con­sid­ers the plight of a young boy whose foot­ball prowess (soc­cer as op­posed to Kaeper­nick’s Amer­i­can foot­ball) gained him en­try in­to one of our “elite” schools, a crit­i­cal switch-rail, promis­ing a track out of ab­ject pover­ty and en­dem­ic gang vi­o­lence, in­to a world of com­par­a­tive com­fort and safe­ty. But we see that these schools are not with­out their own dan­gers and moral com­plex­i­ties.

Por­tia Sub­ran con­jures up an os­ten­si­bly sanc­ti­mo­nious, yet sex­u­al­ly preda­to­ry teacher who one can en­counter in re­pressed Chris­t­ian girls’ schools.  Sub­ran’s “Bit­ter Rain” trans­lates the spec­tral land­scape of Bowen’s Edge of the White For­est in­to “white rain”, demon­strat­ing that white­ness, though pre­sent­ed as im­mac­u­late, can alien­ate and oblit­er­ate.  

Bowen’s Moun­tain Cave elic­its a cau­tion­ary re­sponse from Sharon Mil­lar in her epony­mous tale. She re­calls the Cumaca Cave tragedy of 1964 where two young ex­plor­ers, Adam Richards and Vic­tor Abra­ham, lost their lives. This sen­si­tive­ly writ­ten sto­ry pays homage to these brave young men whose love of our coun­try led them in­to dark­ness. The Col­lec­tion im­plores us to look in­to the sub­ter­ranean, what is con­cealed, but we are al­so warned that we must tread care­ful­ly. In­deed, we must tread fear­ful­ly when we cross over in­to oth­er worlds–be­low or above ground.

Kevin Jared Ho­sein sees a float­ing swan in Bowen’s Totem and his mind wan­ders to the bru­tal rape of the Spar­tan queen, Le­da, by Zeus trans­formed in­to a swan. The is­sue of that rape is two eggs: hero­ic twins hatch from one and two women (one be­ing the in­fa­mous, He­len of Troy), who will ush­er forth great blood­shed, hatch from the oth­er egg.  In Ho­sein’s “The Snar­ing of a Swan: A Fa­ble”, the swan is the vic­tim, her dai­ly life one of re­peat­ed trans­gres­sions de­mand­ed by her stub­born­ly blind hus­band.  

In many ways, I am re­mind­ed of the He­bridean tale of the Selkie Girl, ar­guably show­ing that our hu­man myths are of­ten ar­che­typ­al, draw­ing on our sim­i­lar his­to­ries of tri­umph and sub­ju­ga­tion, com­mit­ting “un­nat­ur­al” acts that, para­dox­i­cal­ly, tell us about what it means to be nat­u­ral­ly hu­man. Though, the flavour of the Col­lec­tion is idio­syn­crat­i­cal­ly Caribbean.

When con­vers­ing about what tri­umph and sub­ju­ga­tion look like in our re­gion, we of­ten start where “doc­u­ment­ed” his­to­ry starts–with the bru­tal ar­rival of Eu­ro­peans. The Sar­gas­so Sea has dark myth­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance, the ear­li­est writ­ten ref­er­ence be­ing by Christo­pher Colum­bus dur­ing his first voy­age west. To­day sar­gas­sum is mul­ti­ply­ing in the wa­ters fur­ther south in the Caribbean Basin, com­pli­cat­ing liveli­hoods and recre­ation. What a per­fect ve­hi­cle for the pere­gri­na­tions of a dis­placed, gra­tu­itous­ly malev­o­lent spir­it.  

Re­act­ing to Bowen’s North Coast Road, Eliz­a­beth Wal­cott-Hack­shaw has such a spec­tre ar­rive on a float­ing bed of the stuff and, in true in­ter­lop­er style, trav­el un­in­vit­ed along the coastal road, caus­ing dam­age to those he meets.  

No fur­ther spoil­ers, but suf­fice it to say, the sump­tu­ous book is rich with hand­some­ly re­pro­duced im­ages and a sol­id col­lec­tion of good, well-writ­ten sto­ries.  In lavway style, I opened my re­view by throw­ing words at a Ba­jan friend, but I was re­al­ly singing the prais­es of our beloved North Coast Road. In the prop­er cir­cu­lar­i­ty of all things, it is, there­fore, the per­fect place to close, for that paint­ing is my favourite amongst Mar­sha’s se­lec­tion of Ed­die’s works.