Cazabon, Kusama and the Eternal Archives

It begins at the entrance and extends halfway into the box. Approximately six feet in length and four feet wide, it can accommodate only three persons at a time. Around it is water.

We enter tentatively careful not to misstep. There are probably a hundred little lights hanging from the ceiling. The door shuts. The lights are switched off. We are in complete darkness. My three-year old niece isn’t happy about this momentary blindness. Soon the lights begin to flicker and she is in awe. They look like stars on a clear night sky. We are all silent.

As the lights flicker into being until the entire chamber is lit, they multiply into an infinite number.

The experience is momentarily disorienting until I am able to identify the mirrors in the box.

I try to place myself, to find my own location, within the space.

Where exactly do the real lights stop and where does the reflection begin? This mirroring of lights is like standing on the edge of the earth looking out into an endless sky. There is a simultaneous feeling of being dead and alive. The water surrounding our platform ensures that feeling of being on the edge of the earth or some other planet, looking out into an infinite sky. A slight miscalculated step and we are off firm ground into an unknown.

The air inside is cool. I wish to sit rather than stand as we are doing, and feel the lights a lot longer but alas!, our time limit of one minute has come to an end. Each one of us has had a different experience.

Images triggered off in our heads, emerging from our subconscious.

We carry this one-minute memory with us. It will become a part of our lives whether we know it or not. In a conversation at some point, it will emerge. We may see something that reminds us of that day or call up the flickering lights in reference to something similar.

One minute is enough to make us want more of it but that’s perhaps the point of the installation - to leave us as it is, wanting.

The installation by the world-renowned Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama, was part of an exhibition at the Houston Museum of Fine Arts. The installation is one of two of her infinity boxes. Entitled ‘Aftermath of Obliteration of Eternity’, it feels like a bad joke - almost as if, we are forced to gaze in wonderment at something that we know we won’t gaze on forever.

Everything ultimately comes to an end. Lights flicker on and then there is complete darkness. Time is limited, as the one-minute time limit seems to suggest. We want to know more about the artist too. I pull it up on the internet and read a brief biography. Now I can understand some of her motivations.

But despite her motivations, her work motivates me in ways that tap into my own experience of life. And therein lies the essence and importance of art. Whether one connects with a piece of art or not, both experiences tell the story of our varied lives.

A work of art is not only the product itself but the spaces, people and cultures that produce it. How the audience interprets it gives life and meaning to that piece. As such, works of art carry with them not only the artist’s worldview but everything that makes her. And as viewers, we absorb from it, meanings that we can apply to our own lives. But art, music, dance, drama, are all peripheral pursuits when people are hungry or nations are at war.

What then is their value? Perhaps the answer lies in the aftermath? The purchase of the Cazabon paintings and the current exhibition of the works at the Diplomatic Centre in Port of Spain is a positive step. The Prime Minister’s call for youths to be more exposed to art work and the thrust towards preserving the island’s cultural heritage are all progressive efforts.

The issue remains, however, how do we make the concept of art less abstract and more relevant to the population? How do we create a culture of appreciation for creative works inclusive of the performing arts and various forms of visual arts? And even more importantly, how do we say to people that our artistic work holds historical meaning and this should be of importance to us as a society, when a large section of the society is struggling to make ends meet with high costs of living and job cuts? In essence, how do we create a balance between the abs t r a c t and the real? sharda.

patasar@ gma i l .