Dear Editor,
Mr Deonarine, Assistant to the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport responded to my letter captioned ‘Given the poor support from government the artist community is shocked by the size of the budget allocation to the Culture Ministry (SN, April 27) with a letter to SN published on April 30 captioned ‘If Mr Alli is truly interested in partnership, he should engage the Director of Culture, Dr James Rose.”
Mr Deonarine refers to my letter as assertions and half-truths, and that the ministry is going to let the public and the artistic community know the other side of the story.
Editor, my letter to your newspaper was quite straightforward and I did not resort to the use of subterfuge. I simply stated that the neglect of the creative arts and privation of the artistic community happened at a time when the ministry had at its disposal hundreds of millions of dollars. This was in the aftermath of Carifesta X when most artists went home broke. A general allocation from the fund could have been made available to the artists’ community that was facing hard times. Artists often have to endure great sacrifice to produce works of art for exhibitions which are intended to develop an awareness and appreciation for Guyanese culture – an extremely difficult and complex undertaking.
Rather than stick to the content of my letter, the ministry deliberately included Mr Christopher Ram in the picture to create a particular mindset in the reader. Mr Deonarine went on to assert that I had been recently employed by the University of Guyana, which is to misinform the public, but let’s see how this will enhance this ministry’s credibility in presenting its side of the story.
He recounted how the ministry bought a piece of my work and that I should be grateful. To be precise, the ministry has bought one piece of my work in the fifteen years it has existed.
I wish to bring to the reader’s attention that under the PNC government Guyanese art was promoted nationally and internationally. In ministries the sculptures of Phillip Moore, Omowalle Lumumba, Gary Thomas, Ernest Vandyke and myself were prominently displayed. Most of my works presently in the National Collection were bought by the late Chairman of the Department of Culture, Ms Lynette Dolphin and Director of Art, Dr Denis Williams. My prize-winning piece ‘Architects of US Military Invasion of Grenada’ was displayed by the late President LFS Burnham in February 1985 at the Presidential Secretariat for the visit of Dr Raul Castro. This piece is now permanently displayed at the United Nations Headquarters, Washington USA. There were no conditionalities attached to the purchase of works from the artists, such as supporting the government out of a sense of gratitude, in the manner in which the ministry is doing to members of the artistic community.
It is under the PNC government that I won the judges award at the National Visual Arts Competition in 1984, and the National Award in the sculpture category in 1987. Had it been under the PPP government and Ministry of Culture I would have been ensnared and placed in a compromising position; but as fate would have it under the 18 years of PPP rule I never did win any recognition in the field of creativity, even though I represented Guyana at the UNESCO-CATE worldwide exhibition in Washington 2006; in Venezuela and Brazil more recently; and at a number of Carifestas, and despite the fact that I built the National Unity Monument.
I will not try to counter all the fabrications concocted by the ministry in its letters. Of course the ministry’s side of the story is to seek to discredit me as much as possible in the eyes of the Guyanese public and to send a strong message to the artistic community.
Mr Deonarine went on to say that the artists were only one category of our society and wanted some special treatment to the detriment of our youths. Mr Deonarine’s non-apprehension of the part played by the visual arts in the development of human society has led to this misapprehension, and thus his inability to appreciate the contribution made by successive generations of artists in the pre and post- colonial period, and the promotion of Carifesta in the region since 1973 until Carifesta X in 2008 that was held in Guyana.
He is disrespectful to those talented men and women who were part of the UNESCO-CATE (Caribbean Travelling Exhibition) which was displayed for an entire decade in the region and concluded at the UNESCO headquarters, Paris, in June 1995. And in 2006 in recognition of the dynamics of the creative arts in Guyana, the Inter-American Development Bank Culture Centre Gallery hosted an exhibition for those remaining Guyanese artists living in Guyana under the theme ‘The Art of Guyana – A Multicultural Caribbean Adventure.’ The exhibition came in for high praise in the Washington Post and on the internet. It did make Guyanese living in the USA proud to see Guyana positively spotlighted.
Mr Deonarine said that to give preference to the visual arts would be to the detriment of our youths. This man is the Assistant to the Minister of Culture, an institution that plays a pivotal part in the development process of society, and yet he does not seem to know why the visual arts are incorporated in the school curriculum at a very tender age. The answer is to nurture and develop in the child in those early years the ability to explore the external world of objects, and later on to awaken that subjective part referred to as the introspective or intuitive experience, out of which come geniuses, scientists, great thinkers and artists, as well as suitable candidates for self-realization. Clearly what the Minister should do is to invite members of the artistic community to his office to work out ways in which artists can benefit from the hundreds of millions of dollars in the Arts and Sport and Development Fund, whether it be through the purchase of works of art for the CJIA, the National Gallery, the ICC, the PHG or government ministries, or to subsidize exhibitions in the various administrative regions in order to develop a more culturally oriented younger generation of Guyanese.
In conclusion, I would wish Mr Deonarine to know that I am not going to lose any sleep on account of his sentiment that I am losing my standing in the artistic community. When he and his like have faded into oblivion, history will absolve me.
Yours faithfully,
Desmond Alli
