Bri­an­na Mc­Carthy is a mixed me­dia artist who lives and works in Trinidad and To­ba­go. Her work takes on the in­tri­ca­cies and dy­nam­ics of rep­re­sent­ing Afro-Caribbean women who are por­trayed as be­ing strong, long-suf­fer­ing, ex­oti­cised and pic­turesque be­ings against a back­drop of pover­ty, hard­ship, abuse and/or scorn. Mc­Carthy's con­struc­tions and rep­re­sen­ta­tions re­volt against and sub­vert the stereo­typ­i­cal trends of rep­re­sent­ing the black body. Through var­i­ous me­dia: col­lage, draw­ing, il­lus­tra­tion and paint­ing she con­structs and ma­nip­u­lates a range of deeply per­son­al and emo­tion­al ex­pe­ri­ences with­in the con­struc­tions. Her work ex­pos­es a new range of depth of ex­pres­sions and emo­tions, which for the most part, are non-ex­is­tent in the record­ed cul­tures of the Caribbean land­scape.

Work­ing in beau­ty and rep­e­ti­tion, the faces and be­ings she as­sem­bles will add to, and pos­si­bly change per­cep­tions and al­low for a so­ci­etal awak­en­ing of the ways in which re­la­tions and re­la­tion­ships are com­mu­ni­cat­ed and chang­ing in in­creas­ing­ly small world. Mc­Carthy takes pen­cil to pa­per, ink to vel­lum and knife to cloth, to mend the parts of her ex­pe­ri­ence, to fill in its gaps with beau­ty, ques­tions and ex­pres­sions of the so­cial and re­la­tion­al. Mc­Carthy's colour­ful work will be on dis­play at Medul­la Art Gallery, lo­cat­ed at Fitt Street, Wood­brook, from March 15, un­til March 29. Her ex­hi­bi­tion is en­ti­tled "Af­ter­Colour," and takes a look at the con­tem­po­rary dy­nam­ic of com­plex­ion defin­ing beau­ty in di­as­po­ran women.

It ex­am­ines the rep­re­sen­ta­tion of women of dif­fer­ent shades of skin, by them­selves and by oth­ers, and the idea of "shadism," both in Trinidad and with­in a wider, glob­al dis­cus­sion that's hap­pen­ing right now. Ex­plor­ing the lev­els of val­ue and beau­ty as­so­ci­at­ed with skin colour and hair tex­ture, the show, com­pris­ing five sep­a­rate bod­ies of work and min­ing in­spi­ra­tion from lo­cal clas­si­fieds, youth cul­ture, anony­mous on­line sta­tus­es from all over the in­ter­net and the artist's per­son­al ex­pe­ri­ences, presents a new work as its fo­cal point-Mc­Carthy's "Colour(ed)s"-imag­ined rep­re­sen­ta­tions of women in a pos­si­ble fu­ture, af­ter racial mark­ers and shade have lost their sta­tus as such great­ly defin­ing char­ac­ter­is­tics.

About the gallery

Medul­la Art Gallery has been es­tab­lished to car­ry on and de­vel­op the tra­di­tions of Aquarela Gal­leries. Medul­la, as the name im­plies, will pro­vide a core space for art ed­u­ca­tion with pub­lic par­tic­i­pa­tion through ex­hi­bi­tions, fo­rums and sem­i­nars. Is­abel Brash, Mar­tin Mout­tet and Ge­of­frey Mac Lean hope to use Medul­la to demon­strate art, not on­ly as a so­cial ex­pres­sion, but al­so as a medi­um for ther­a­py and growth. Work­shops will form part of all ex­hi­bi­tions and in­clude in­tro­duc­tions not on­ly to paint­ing, but sculp­ture, print-mak­ing and me­dia.