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Thursday, July 24, 2025

A Brand New You

by

20140217

A Brand New You, now run­ning at the Na­tion­al Li­brary in Port-of-Spain, is not an ex­hi­bi­tion. It's a liv­ing or­gan­ism that morphs and ex­pands with every vis­i­tor. It's a book brought to life, its print­ed pages plas­tered on the walls, wait­ing to be gazed at, scrib­bled on, and di­gest­ed.

Those of us who are used to stand­ing in rev­er­ence be­fore glassed-in works of art, dis­cussing them in hushed tones, not get­ting too close for fear that a crotch­ety do­cent will clomp over and warn us not to touch, will prob­a­bly be a lit­tle tak­en aback by Shep­herd's mad meth­ods.

Not on­ly are you al­lowed to touch the posters if the spir­it moves you, you are in­vit­ed–en­cour­aged–to sit at the clut­tered craft ta­ble to de­sign your own ad­di­tion.

A bas­ket of mul­ti-coloured mark­ers, slips of pa­per, ran­dom bric-a-brac like twine, glit­ter, and bits of tin­foil, are your tools. You write a mes­sage from your heart and glue it to the poster of your choice. Your lega­cy to those who come af­ter you.

It's an in­vi­ta­tion that's sure to ex­cite the la­tent graf­fi­ti artist in­side all of us.

It comes from Ra­jen­dra Shep­herd, who has a Tri­ni moth­er and a British fa­ther, and who grew up in Eng­land, but re­turned here of­ten to vis­it his fam­i­ly. Notwith­stand­ing his smooth, ra­dio-an­nounc­er's British ac­cent, he con­sid­ers Trinidad his home, which it has been since 2000.

Ex­plain­ing the ex­hi­bi­tion, Shep­herd says: "It's an­oth­er form of so­cial me­dia. Just not the elec­tron­ic so­cial me­dia we're ac­cus­tomed to."

So­cial it is, even im­mer­sive. The set­ting looks, feels, and even sounds like any ag­ing ur­ban neigh­bour­hood. A child's clothes are pinned to a line, and over the sound sys­tem you hear the hub­bub of peo­ple liv­ing in close quar­ters.

A young girl yelling out, "Ma! I go­ing!" Peo­ple talk­ing, laugh­ing, ar­gu­ing. Wa­ter gush­ing from a burst pipe. The set­ting evokes what we in T&T see in our­selves, our en­vi­ron­ment and the space we live in.

Even the way the dis­play was or­gan­ised is a trib­ute to com­mu­ni­ty liv­ing. The posters were de­signed by a friend of Shep­herd's, Ger­ard An­drews of Ar­tifex Tres De­signs. Many of them fea­ture the mis­chie­vous face of a nine-year-old boy called Ashan. An­oth­er friend of Shep­herd's mans the desk.

Now read the book

The posters are sparse­ly word­ed, with just one thought on each, or, rather, one "wis­dom," as he calls them. None ends in a full stop, as it is up to us to take each idea fur­ther. They are just a hand­ful of the 90 "wis­doms" in his book Tilt the Gaze that Changes Every­thing.

"The book is about the pow­er of 'pos­si­bil­i­ty think­ing,' not pos­i­tive think­ing, be­cause there's val­ue in the neg­a­tive as well. It shows you what you don't want. I'm in­ter­est­ed in peo­ple see­ing po­ten­tial in their lives.

"I'm pas­sion­ate about me­dia," he says. "I study it; I love it. I un­der­stand what it does."

What it does for many of us, un­for­tu­nate­ly, is con­cen­trate our gaze on the end­less di­et of pain, suf­fer­ing and un­hap­pi­ness it feeds us every day. A book such as this, and the ex­hi­bi­tion, helps to re­mind us that the sto­ries we read of aren't the on­ly ones out there. "We have to know that, and not take it to heart. That shouldn't be our on­ly fo­cus."

The com­ments, elab­o­rate­ly dec­o­rat­ed and stuck to the walls, re­flect the mes­sage of love and hope that vis­i­tors re­ceive from the bright, sim­ple posters. It's as if they are moved to re­spond in kind, not just to Shep­herd's wis­doms, but to each oth­er. And so it grows, one sticky note re­spond­ing to an­oth­er, en­gag­ing, chal­leng­ing and sup­port­ing.

The book, in turn, holds a small pro­por­tion of the wis­doms that have come to Shep­herd dur­ing his yo­ga and med­i­ta­tion prac­tice.

He's think­ing of ex­pand­ing on the dis­play by tak­ing it to the busi­ness and school en­vi­ron­ment, us­ing it as a jump­ing-off point to talk about lan­guage of the self and how we con­struct our­selves through lan­guage.

Tilt�the Gaze that Changes Every­thing is a hand-held, pock­et-sized trea­sure that is now avail­able in hard copy at Nigel Khan's, RIK and Char­ran's, and down­load­able from Ama­zon. In each copy, buy­ers will find a charm­ing East­er egg in the form of a small card which, he in­sists, is not a book­mark. It is "a pub­lic can­vas on which to share your wis­doms–words of trans­for­ma­tion–with oth­ers." You write a brief mes­sage from the heart, re­turn to the store where you bought the book, and slip the card in­to an­oth­er copy, as a sur­prise for the next read­er.

Find­ing a brand new you

The ex­hi­bi­tion A Brand New You will be up at the Na­tion­al Li­brary un­til Feb­ru­ary 22, free of charge.

Step in pre­pared to have your own say. Bet­ter yet, walk with a lit­tle trea­sure of your own to dec­o­rate your art­work: a feath­er, a span­gle from an old Car­ni­val cos­tume, a dried leaf that re­minds you of the gar­den where you grew up.

Be­cause this isn't an art ex­hi­bi­tion; it's a col­lab­o­ra­tive, com­mu­ni­ty ef­fort that needs you to help it grow.


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