When 13-year-old Sher­ry Ann Guy copped the ti­tle of Ju­nior Car­ni­val Queen in 1974, it cre­at­ed a stir among the pub­lic—but not in the way you think. Her cos­tume, de­signed by mas man and Car­ni­val icon Pe­ter Min­shall wowed crowds and judges with its flu­id move­ment that syn­chro­nised with the young per­former’s mo­tion while play­ing mas and the joy that beamed from her face. The por­tray­al gave life to the hum­ming­bird, From the Land of the Hum­ming­bird—that had tak­en Min­shall five months to per­fect in the pri­va­cy of his stu­dio.

Com­mem­o­rat­ing the 50th an­niver­sary of the icon­ic cos­tume that al­so ap­peared in 1976 for Min­shall’s Par­adise Lost, in­spired by John Mil­ton’s po­em with the same name, Stollmey­er’s Cas­tle/Cas­tle Kil­lar­ney was adorned with the ex­ten­sive work of the artist. Co-cu­rat­ed by Kathryn Chan and Austin Fi­do, the pur­pose of the ex­hi­bi­tion is to ed­u­cate young artists and de­sign­ers on the tech­ni­cal range of Min­shall’s work­man­ship and the hu­man en­er­gy that gives life to his eye-catch­ing cos­tumes.

Chan, who has worked close­ly with Min­shall, and had even gone to school with Sher­ry Ann Guy who’d worn Min­shall’s hum­ming­bird, said that she was still dis­cov­er­ing new doc­u­ments and sto­ries ‘From the Land of the Hum­ming­bird.’ She al­so con­fessed that the orig­i­nal cos­tume was still yet to be found. With the ex­hi­bi­tion be­ing the first stage of show­cas­ing Min­shall’s icon­ic works, she hopes it will be a cat­a­lyst in at­tain­ing items, pho­tos, and tes­ti­monies from the past.

“I’ve heard a sto­ry where the dress was on dis­play in the na­tion­al mu­se­um, and there’s an­oth­er sto­ry where there was a big flood and it got wet and ru­ined. Part of this project and ex­hi­bi­tion is do­ing re­search. So, we hope some­one turns up one day and has an­oth­er sto­ry and we can then put all the pieces to­geth­er be­cause it dis­ap­peared off the face of the earth,” Chan said.

Re­flect­ing on the vi­tal­i­ty and en­er­gy that flows like wa­ter through­out Min­shall’s cos­tumes, she rec­om­mends lo­cal artists and those with­in the car­ni­val scene to not ig­nore the hu­man body, cit­ing it as cru­cial in the cre­ation of cos­tumes that im­pact the sens­es.

“I think it’s re­al­ly im­por­tant for young artists, young de­sign­ers, young peo­ple work­ing in Car­ni­val to know that it’s not one draw­ing to cre­ate one cos­tume—you have to re­al­ly get in­to the con­cept and un­der­stand the hu­man body to make a cos­tume that’s gonna be ar­tic­u­lat­ed by the en­er­gy of the hu­man body,” Chan said.

Austin Fi­do, who as­sist­ed Chan in putting to­geth­er the au­dio-vi­su­al spec­ta­cle, said a high­light of Min­shall’s work was the fact that it re­flect­ed the event/is­sues of the times in which cos­tumes had been made—a prac­tice that he be­lieves has not dis­ap­peared from the lo­cal scene, but more so, height­ened by Min­shall’s at­ten­tion to both lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al af­fairs.

The ex­hi­bi­tion runs un­til May 9 from Tues­day to Fri­day from 9 am to 5 pm, and Sat­ur­day from 10 am to 2 pm. Ad­mis­sion is free.