The art­work of sec­ondary school stu­dents from Trinidad and To­ba­go has re­ceived rave re­views at a re­cent ex­hi­bi­tion at the Unit­ed Na­tions Head­quar­ters, New York, USA. Am­bas­sadors to the Unit­ed Na­tions (UN) and diplo­mats from var­i­ous African mis­sions in­clud­ing Mali, Côte d'Ivoire, Gam­bia, Ugan­da, South Africa and Nige­ria were re­port­ed­ly im­pressed by the dis­play of cre­ativ­i­ty and pro­fes­sion­al­ism of T&T's young artists.

The ex­hi­bi­tion, staged in the lob­by of the UN build­ing, at­tract­ed close to 250 in­vi­tees over the course of the past three days. Diplo­mats from Turkey, Aus­tralia, Cana­da, US, Bangladesh, Mau­ri­tius and France were among those who made en­quiries about pur­chas­ing se­lect­ed pieces.

The ex­hi­bi­tion is part of the ac­tiv­i­ties con­duct­ed by the mis­sion in com­mem­o­ra­tion of the 50th An­niver­sary of In­de­pen­dence of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go and al­so marks five decades since T&T be­came a mem­ber state of the UN. Forty out­stand­ing pieces pro­duced by the stu­dents were se­lect­ed on the ba­sis of a com­pe­ti­tion in­volv­ing over 500 sub­mis­sions from 150 schools. The com­pe­ti­tion was held ear­li­er this year by the Min­istry of For­eign Af­fairs, un­der the theme "A Re­flec­tion of Peo­ple of African De­scent" in com­mem­o­ra­tion of the UN Res­o­lu­tion 64/169 which de­clared 2011 as the In­ter­na­tion­al Year for Peo­ple of African De­scent.

In open­ing the ex­hi­bi­tion, T&T's Per­ma­nent Rep­re­sen­ta­tive to the UN, Rod­ney Charles said, "the paint­ings be­fore us rep­re­sent the work of stu­dents of var­i­ous eth­nic back­grounds. This is a true re­flec­tion of how well T&T has man­aged re­la­tions among di­verse groups which make up our rain­bow na­tion," he said. Charles in­di­cat­ed that the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go was mind­ful of the im­por­tance of cre­ative arts in build­ing bridges among civil­i­sa­tions, es­pe­cial­ly at the UN.

In keep­ing with this phi­los­o­phy, one of the art pieces en­ti­tled More to be Done...For­ward Nev­er Back by Azam Im­ti­az Az­iz of St Bene­dict's Col­lege is be­ing do­nat­ed to the UN be­cause it cap­tures on can­vas the glob­al mes­sage which sig­ni­fies what work has al­ready been done at the UN to ad­vance racial har­mo­ny among the peo­ples of the world, and what more is re­quired to re­alise this ob­jec­tive. The Min­istry of For­eign Af­fairs is of the view that the dis­play­ing of the ex­hibits at the UN has the po­ten­tial to ex­pand the cre­ative and en­tre­pre­neur­ial reach of the young artists in T&T.