Matthew Chin

matthew.chin@guardian.co.tt

When some­one says they are bipo­lar, we may be quick to do one of four things: judge them, dis­tance our­selves, be­come dis­mis­sive, or of­fer un­so­licit­ed ad­vice.

For lo­cal mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary artist Marin­na Sha­reef, men­tal ill­ness is nei­ther taboo nor a for­eign sub­ject; she lives with the ill­ness every day. It is art that helps her to un­der­stand her ex­pe­ri­ences, and she us­es this fo­rum to in­vite peo­ple to un­der­stand her as well.

The 25-year-old artist earned her Bach­e­lor’s de­gree in Vi­su­al Arts from the De­part­ment of Cre­ative and Fes­ti­val Arts at UWI’s St Au­gus­tine cam­pus in 2019 and has since ex­hib­it­ed at mul­ti­ple shows while al­so teach­ing oth­ers to ex­press them­selves via dig­i­tal and phys­i­cal me­dia.

Us­ing an ar­ray of medi­ums such as ink, glit­ter, bal­loons, spray paint, acrylic paint, flu­id acrylic and stick­ers, she builds her in­ter­con­nect­ed world of por­traits. She not­ed that the vivid ef­fect of her paint­ings came about when she ap­plied flu­id acrylic over acrylic paint.

Sha­reef held her first so­lo ex­hi­bi­tion, “God of Ma­nia” at the Frame Shop: A Space In­na Space at the cor­ner of Car­los and Roberts streets, Wood­brook, Port-of-Spain. The show end­ed yes­ter­day.

As a means of nav­i­gat­ing her emo­tions, Sha­reef cre­at­ed a “mythol­o­gy” of two char­ac­ters: the “God of Ma­nia” and the “God of De­pres­sion” that re­peat as self-por­traits, tes­ti­fy­ing of her lived ex­pe­ri­ences of bipo­lar dis­or­der.

“The God of Ma­nia is about the man­ic state; it’s hard to de­scribe. It’s a sort of very el­e­vat­ed, grandiose hap­pi­ness, and so to de­scribe this feel­ing I of­ten use the metaphor of a con­stant birth­day par­ty. While that may seem fun, a con­stant birth­day par­ty is kind of hell­ish be­cause you have to be hap­py all the time, and it goes on and on. These paint­ings de­scribe that. The vivid colours al­most burn …” she said.

The two ex­tremes of the men­tal ill­ness, ma­nia and de­pres­sion, are ex­plored through her por­traits. Her acrylic por­trait, “The Mor­tal”, speaks of mixed episodes where­by peo­ple with bipo­lar dis­or­der are de­pressed but al­so have man­ic ten­den­cies, show­ing the two ex­tremes which oc­cur at the same time.

Sha­reef said, “It’s me—what would hap­pen if the gods were fight­ing? I was think­ing what would hap­pen in that world, some­thing weath­er-like? So I came up with the idea that maybe it would be rain­ing bal­loons, and this per­son, me—the mor­tal—would be wrecked, phys­i­cal­ly con­fused and deal­ing with an in­ter­nal storm. These things are hard to ex­plain es­pe­cial­ly when you’re ex­pe­ri­enc­ing them.”

A con­stant through­out her paint­ings is not on­ly vivid colours and the va­ri­ety of medi­ums she used, but al­so mo­tifs of can­dy and food.

“Peo­ple of­ten use sweets in ex­cess to deal with emo­tions. I love sweets. My favourite is choco­late cake over every­thing,” she con­fessed. “But too many sweets can lead to health prob­lems, so while it may look pret­ty they of­ten do lead to is­sues. With the God of De­pres­sion, I use sweet mo­tifs a lot be­cause de­pres­sion is al­most like a dizzy­ing, de­pres­sive feel­ing.”

Re­gard­ing the stig­mas sur­round­ing men­tal health and how some peo­ple dis­miss the ex­pe­ri­ences had by men­tal­ly ill peo­ple, the artist re­spond­ed by say­ing that such “per­sons do not un­der­stand the in­tri­ca­cies of it, and do not un­der­stand that (men­tal­ly ill peo­ple) need med­ica­tion or ther­a­py to get bet­ter. We call St Ann’s Hos­pi­tal “the mad house”, and so it’s deeply em­bed­ded with­in our cul­ture to talk about men­tal ill­ness as some­thing that we can (dis­miss).

“(Men­tal health) is as preva­lent and im­por­tant as a phys­i­cal ill­ness, and we should treat it as such. And I think, es­pe­cial­ly, we see it in our el­ders as they get old­er when they have men­tal is­sues. They would say, ‘No, I don’t need anx­i­ety med­ica­tion; why I need that for?’ But they do. When we have paint­ings and talk about men­tal health more, it’ll be­come less stig­ma­tised, and maybe peo­ple will feel bet­ter about hav­ing these op­tions.”

Sha­reef’s so­lo ex­hi­bi­tion proves her can­dour, she re­fus­es to hide and in­vites the pub­lic to wit­ness the strug­gles of those re­ject­ed and mis­un­der­stood by so­ci­ety.

To un­der­stand more of her life, and al­so how the mind can be­come our en­e­mies, Sha­reef’s next show­ing of her lat­est work will take the form of a dig­i­tal video ex­hi­bi­tion at Grander­son Lab, Bel­mont, on a date to be an­nounced. She will then be ex­hibit­ing in Seat­tle, in Jan­u­ary 2024.