Preserving our heritage

the Editor: I was having trouble breathing. When I came out of the Hinkson Exhibition at Kiskadee Galleries there was a lump blocking my chest and I could feel the tears prickling behind my eyes and my vision blurring as I pulled away from the curb.

There should be a health warning posted outside the yellow building for unwary members of the public who stumble in unprepared. I can only remember feeling like this a very few times in my life looking at a work of art: the Caryatides in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, an early Picasso exhibition at the Guggenheim, Gillian Bishop’s jewellery exhibition after the coup, seeing the Elgin Marbles’ The Dying Gaul at the British Museum, Minshall’s white wings against green grass and a blue sky..maybe a handful of others in many decades.

This time, looking at the exhibition entitled “Christ in Trinidad” I felt as though I were going to cry. I fled, eventually, knowing that I would have to go back when I had collected myself enough to be able to behave myself in public. This had nothing to do with religion. The paintings themselves don’t speak to religion so much as touch your spirit, which transcends all religions. What a treasure for the nation that series of paintings is! Every one tugs at your heart. You recognise the buildings in the background, the body language of the people whom you recognise from Woodford Square, the beach in Mayaro, a parang in Paramin. You know those police officers, that crippled young man. The paintings are Trini to de Bone for those who are Trini to de Bone.

I want to beg for them to be properly mounted and placed permanently in some public building where every proud Trini can sit and wonder and reminisce, and every tourist from away can sit in awe of the talent that can be found in this country. If we can budget so many millions to enable CEPEP to deface the countryside with painted rocks and concreted graffiti, surely, as a nation, we can afford to save for Trinidad and Tobago these paintings which depict the soul of the nation. I hope that someone will put them into a book so that I can send a copy to every lonely Trini in the diaspora that I know of, so they have a little piece of home to turn to when their exile gets to be too much. Is there anyone who can make this gift to the nation? Can’t we start an Arts Foundation with the proceeds of the National Lottery as other countries have done so as to preserve some of our living heritage ?

Diana Mahabir-Wyatt
Port-of-Spain