Timehri Transitions: Ex-panding Concepts in Guyana Art concludes today at the Wilmer Jennings Gallery At Kenkeleba House in New York, NY, USA.
The work of ten international artists of Guyanese origin was displayed—Damali Abrams, Carl Anderson, Dudley Charles, Victor Davson, Marlon Forrester, Siddiq Khan, Andrew Lyght, Donald Locke, Bernadette Persaud, and Arlington Weithers.
Curator Carl E. Hazelwood, also a Guyanese, said he chose artists whose practices address everything from contemporary abstraction to work that bears a subtle political or cultural critique.
Announcing the exhibition which opened on January 23, he said noted that the Caribbean was known less for serious art and culture than for its lush physical presence, its paradoxical beauty and poverty. “However, it has been receiving focused attention as possible undiscovered territory for new art and fresh aesthetic approaches.”
The exhibition received favourable reviews, including from the Wall Street Journal, which quoted Hazelwood as saying: “The thing about Guyana and the Caribbean in general is that because of its multi-ethnic character… there is a peculiar mix of vitality there.
“There are tensions between Indians and Blacks although everyone’s got something in them like myself; I am black and have some Indian ancestry.”
The Journal mentioned Guyana’s Petroglyphs, given the fact that they are the subject of Lyght’s artwork.
It highlighted the rainforest imagery by author and painter Bernadette Persaud, which encapsulates the past and the present. “And on closer inspection, wispy-white bullet trails and bleeding wounds mar the verdant beauty of Ms Persaud’s creations. All the while, seemingly, her forebears send hidden messages in the rays of the sun which curl into Arabic signs declaiming ‘there is no God but God’ on their way down to the canopy,” according to the Journal.
It quoted Hazelwood thus: “Her work at a glance looks like the typical beautiful and lush landscape which is Guyana but she also understands the character for the post colonial situation where there is violence because of poverty.” He was speaking about Persaud’s paintings.
Weithers, the Journal said, used computer generated images of earth overladen with thick strokes of red color and dramatic vortex clouds – bringing to mind climate change and global warming.
Anderson, whose work included oil on canvas and colour pencil and charcoal on canvas and Persaud were the only two artists who still reside in Guyana.
The others, with the exception of the late Donald Locke, whose ceramics were on display, live in the Disapora.
