Akima Mcpherson

Akima McPherson: How does it feel to be back in Guyana exhibiting again? Jerry Barry: You can imagine, I’m very elated. It is something I had planned for

Mondavian Theorem – Kwesi Bovell, Mixed media, 20” x 34” x 4”, 2017 (Photo: Courtesy of K Bovell)

What can be done to improve the environment for visual artists in Guyana? It seems that even when we are brought into rooms before people who purport to want to help us, they are not willing to listen to us. It also seems that support for art and artists matter only when there can be a favourable demonstration of income over expenditure or the furtherance of a particular personal or politicised agenda. But the quiet delight of having a memory triggered about a once joyful time, or the realisation of the intrinsic beauty in the surroundings of our every day is not easily translated into numbers. Similarly, the provocation of a fantastical thought or a line of contemplative considerations and internal inquiries are not easily quantifiable with numbers on a spreadsheet.

Designed by Haitian architect Albert Mangonès (1917–2002), Le Nègre Marron is an iconic sculpture and the epitome of (black) freedom visualised. The 2.4 metre (7 feet 9 inches) high bronze sculpture shows a man balanced on one bent knee in a posture of arrested movement. It is as if the man has pulled himself out of a cavernous space; his body arches backward and to his lips he holds a conch shell, a symbol of freedom in a call to rebellion. In his right hand, he holds firmly a machete. The chains attached to the manacle on his extended left leg are broken. Forgetting is not possible with such a monument.

This week I share the Exhibition Overview for the University of Guyana’s Fine Art students’ exhibition Echoes of Resilience currently on at the National

COVID closures came and left. With their departure, the doors to art exhibitions opened. In Guyana, the first such was the E R Burrowes School of Art (BSA) Tutor’s Exhibition in August 2022. Then, in September 2022, the Guyana Women Artists’ Association (GWAA) hosted an exhibition as part of a jazz, fashion, and art event to inaugurate the reopening of the newly renovated National Gallery of Art (NGA), Castellani House. (The remodelling had started in early 2020.) When the NGA reopened, the two ground-floor galleries had been reconfigured into one and the space was now more open to exciting possibilities.

Born April 28, 1930, Stephanie Helena Correia was the third of nine children born to Umbelina and Stephen Campbell. According to her daughter Anna

With the final bat to ball and wickets and overs to spare, CPL Cricket 2024 is over. For some, the closest they got to the Providence Stadium and how they

Diwali is fast approaching. While sacred for Hindus, it offers visual delights for non-Hindus. As I await the viewing of the annual motorcade with some enthusiasm, I think about Hindu art and the intrinsic deliberateness in making objects and images to aid in devotion. I think about the richness of the iconography of Hindu art whether in a representation of Lakshmi or another god/goddess. I also think about the Ceylonese/Sri Lankan scholar Ananda K Coomaraswamy (1877-1947) whose research and writing upturned Western pejorative notions about Hindu art and consequently paved the way for Western understanding and its occasional influence on non-Hindu art and art practices.

(Cont’d from 15 December) Akima McPherson (AM): Charlotte and Mal, I have enjoyed sharing this space with you the past two weeks. Thank you for obliging