Dr Glenville Ash­by

Caribbe­ing's Vi­su­al Art Fes­ti­val ig­nit­ed keen in­ter­est in the Caribbean art form, re­ceiv­ing crit­i­cal ac­claim and wide­spread me­dia cov­er­age in the Tri-state area. The brain child of Trinida­di­an Shel­ley Wor­rell, the fes­ti­val fea­tured the works of an eclec­tic group of artists, pho­tog­ra­phers and film di­rec­tors from the Eng­lish and French speak­ing is­lands.The ex­hib­it si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly dis­played at Mo­ca­da mu­se­um in Brook­lyn and La Mai­son d'Art gallery in up­per Man­hat­tan, and show­cased the his­to­ry and cul­tur­al ex­pres­sions of the re­gion's di­verse peo­ples.

Art co­or­di­na­tor, Hugus As­drubal of Guade­loupe called it "an­oth­er di­men­sion and flavour of artis­tic work that ex­ud­ed rich depth."At La Mai­son d'Art gallery, the black and white pho­to­graph­ic stills of Daniel Goudroufee, along­side the daz­zling colour of Mar­tinique born painter, Alain Caprice re­in­forced the mul­ti­fac­eted prisms used to study and in­ter­pret the Caribbean ex­pe­ri­ence. Both artists were promi­nent­ly dis­played.Goudroufee, who has worked in Trinidad, Cu­ba, Suri­name and Ja­maica, viewed his "stark pho­tog­ra­phy" as "the best way to con­vey peo­ple in their nat­ur­al en­vi­ron­ment." He called his work, "art in its raw form." His over­rid­ing in­ten­tion he stat­ed was "to cap­ture that sin­gu­lar Caribbean el­e­ment" amid the re­gions mul­ti­cul­tur­al mo­sa­ic.

In laboured Eng­lish he said, "I am in­to hu­man be­ings, peo­ple in gen­er­al, so my art tends to unadul­ter­at­ed and graph­ic with a lot of emo­tions." Equal­ly com­pelling was Caprice's Sim­ple Sto­ry of Colour, a col­lage of slav­ery's salient fea­tures-blend­ing lit­er­al­ism and ab­strac­tion. "We are black peo­ple but a peo­ple of colour," he not­ed, ex­plain­ing his lib­er­al use of colour."Colour," he em­pha­sised, "adds el­e­gance and flam­boy­ance to our ex­pres­sion de­spite the hor­rors of our ex­pe­ri­ence."Mul­ti­me­dia artist Bri­an­na Mc Carthy of Trinidad al­so cap­tured the imag­i­na­tion with a col­lage de­pict­ing Caribbean women in a "more nat­ur­al el­e­ment," and not in what she termed, "an ex­oti­cised fash­ion."

The "wear­able art" ex­hib­it of an­oth­er Trinida­di­an, Robert Young al­so caught the at­ten­tion. An artist and de­sign­er whose work has ap­peared in Cal­i­for­nia and Wash­ing­ton, he praised the fes­ti­val for hav­ing "of­fered an in­ti­mate set­ting to show­case new and in­ven­tive work."Founder and di­rec­tor of Caribbe­ing, Wor­rell, at­trib­uted the fes­ti­val's suc­cess to its strate­gic part­ner­ship with the Trinidad and To­ba­go Film Fes­ti­val, An­i­mae Caribe and Mo­ca­do. She al­so tout­ed the "dy­nam­ic tal­ents" in the re­gion as the dri­ving force be­hind this "unique un­der­tak­ing."In­dica­tive of the grow­ing main­stream ap­peal of Caribbe­ing, Wor­rell has al­ready been ap­proached by Mo­ca­da mu­se­um to present a Car­ni­val ex­hib­it to co­in­cide with next year's Labour Day Pa­rade.This year's fes­ti­val al­so fea­tured the works of Ray Llanos, Tean­na Woods and Nicole Ti­tus.

• Dr Glenville Ash­by

New York cor­re­spon­dent

The Guardian Me­dia Group

glenvil­leash­by@gmail.com