Marsha Pearce reviews the exhibition of new works by Trinidadian artist Wendy Nanan. The show opened on April 7, 2016 at Medulla Art Gallery, Port of Spain, and continues through May 2, 2016. SHELLS: A RESPONSE TO THE WORK OF WENDY NANAN, will take place tonight, Friday April 22, at the gallery from 7pm. The event features poet Andre Bagoo, musician Martina Chow, dancer Mikyle Chaitsingh and an artist’s talk by Wendy Nanan. Read the full exhibition review below:
Installation from Wendy Nanan’s New Works 2016 at Medulla Art Gallery, Trinidad. All photographs by Marsha Pearce.
There is a stench emanating from the twin-island Republic of Trinidad and Tobago (T&T). Perhaps it springs from the body of a man found covered in burning tyres in Tortuga or from the decomposing body of a woman found in a plastic bag in the Mitan River. Maybe it is the miasma of corruption happening at a ministerial level or the malodour that comes with the controversy surrounding gymnasts Thema Williams and Marisa Dick. Yet, instead of sounding the nation’s death knell with an air of finality, artist Wendy Nanan offers a proposal of revivial. T&T is ripe for a reboot and Nanan’s latest solo showing of artwork signals this juncture in the cycle of life.
This is not Nanan’s first index to the condition of her native country. In her 2012 exhibition entitled Independence, she used her art to interrogate the milestone of T&T’s fiftieth anniversary of independence from Great Britain. Her papier mâché pieces bearing postage stamps with the image of England’s queen created spaces of reflection on a lingering colonial mentality. In that same show, the work Food and Oil depicted a baby Krishna carrying an enamel cup with a remnant of oil in the left hand and a doubles (an Indian food made typically with two fried flat bread with a filling of chick peas/channa between them) in the right hand. Nanan underscored a need to look beyond an oil economy to the wealth that could spring from relying on a spirit of innovation and an existing cultural reservoir.
Wendy Nanan’s Untitled 4 with detail view. Mixed media, papier mâché and shells.
Nanan’s new body of work seems to extend this concern with T&T’s latent vitality. It taps into the symbolism of the shell, a motif long deployed in art and religion, to evoke ideas of fertility, possibility and rebirth. The spiral design found in a number of the shells used in the show calls to mind a kundalini energy – a creative potential or female energy believed to lie coiled and dormant in the human body, awaiting release. The spiral is associated with cycles of time; with the phases of birth, growth, death and rebirth. According to Swiss psychologist Carl Jung, “when you make a spiral you always come over the same point where you have been before, but never really the same, it is above or below, inside, outside, so it means growth (1929, p.21). In what ways might T&T activate that energy and set upon a course that looks like a spiraling growth pattern? Nanan hints at the presence of a productive force poised for unlocking within the national body and she injects sexual organs into her compositions as a means of building notions of proliferation, new life and new beginnings. Her nine papier mâché sculptural forms take on the appearance of crustacean hulls or seed pods, which are also read as vulvas. Each opening, each fecund female slit, is stuffed with shells in an arrangement that gives a sense of plenty: a cornucopian vision presented as an alternative in a land where one, at once outraged and jaded, might easily see lack and deprivation.
Untitled 1, 5 and 6 by Wendy Nanan. Mixed media, papier mâché and shells.
The exhibition also includes two installations, which reinforce the invocation of a female, creative energy. In one installation, Nanan organises individual leaves, bent in the shape of an inverted or downward pointing triangle, into a grand inverted triangle. This repetition of the shapes, as with the shells, amplifies the potency of their meaning. One shape constitutes a single visual utterance, but the many shapes require the viewer’s repeated eyeing and articulation and are therefore translated into rhythmic verses – together a chant, a meditative mantra. There is promise here. Promise here. Promise. Here.
The inverted triangle is a symbol of the female genitals. It is a sign of the generative force of the womb and an image of water. Nanan picks up this idea of water and fertility in her second installation. Dried leaves surround a leafy green centre, which looks like an oasis or watering hole. A life portal is found in the midst of death.
Installation from Wendy Nanan’s New Works 2016.
If Nanan’s art itself is not enough of a force upon the senses, her choice of Medulla Art Gallery as a space for her show adds to how the art might be interpreted. The experience of descending a spiral staircase (it is significant that the shape of the staircase echoes that kundalini energy radiating from the works on display) into the subterranean exhibition space conjures its own womb-like feeling. You are in the belly of the ground. Once inside, a visit to Nanan’s show provides a potential gestation period out of which the viewer can emerge recharged, reborn – mentally and emotionally.
Of note is the fact that this show has no title. Nanan invites her audience to name the pieces and in doing so she instigates participation in processes of invention and openness. What the artwork is and how the future of T&T will manifest itself are not done deals.
ABOUT THE ARTIST:
Wendy Nanan, having entered her 60th year, can be considered to be one of Trinidad’s senior artists, primarily because she has been working and showing consistently since 1984, after her return home from completing her BFA in England.
She has shown in group and solo exhibitions, in the Caribbean and abroad, and her work is held in national and private collections.
Nanan works in various media, including printmaking, painting and sculpture. Her viewpoint is unique to Trinidad and Tobago, and the Caribbean, as it considers feminist and East Indian issues, and how these integrate in contemporary West Indian society. She is represented in two art history publications: Caribbean Art by Veerle Poupeye, and Art in the Caribbean by Anne Walmsley and Stanley Greaves.
