Si­mon Lee

Artist Kwynn John­son's How the Light En­ters ex­hi­bi­tion at Soft Box Art Gallery on Al­cazar Street, Port-of-Spain, presents a col­lec­tion of draw­ings con­ceived and ex­e­cut­ed in the "ru­in­scapes" of Jacmel and Port-au-Prince, Haiti, af­ter the dev­as­tat­ing earth­quake of Jan­u­ary 2010.The col­lec­tion ex­plores the con­cept of "vi­su­al­is­ing ab­sence and con­ti­nu­ity" in the ru­in­scape and the show it­self, which trav­els to Jacmel in No­vem­ber, is al­so a prac­tice-based re­search sub­mis­sion, as part of John­son's PhD in Cul­tur­al Stud­ies at UWI.Two ma­jor in­flu­ences shaped John­son's re­search field­work, which be­gan with her first trip to Haiti in De­cem­ber 2010. Ini­tial­ly she was look­ing for pa­pi­er mache masks, which are just one of cul­tur­al prod­ucts Jacmel, as Haiti's cul­tur­al cen­tre, is fa­mous for. She trav­elled to the south­ern port (im­mor­talised in Rene De­pestre's nov­el Hadri­ana dans tous mes Reves) in the night and awoke to the ru­ins of the town, whose ar­chi­tec­ture is echoed in that of New Or­leans' French Quar­ter.

A meet­ing with young rub­ble artist An­der­son Am­broise, and his as­sem­blages of tile frag­ments and ob­jects found in the post-quake rub­ble, in­tro­duced her to the idea of con­ti­nu­ity be­yond the de­struc­tion and in­formed her sub­se­quent work as much as a quote from Alphonse Ques­nel: "There is an earth­quake every day, not on­ly on Jan­u­ary 12. Through that fault in our lives, the light en­ters." John­son at­trib­ut­es her choice of medi­um and meth­ods of ex­e­cu­tion to the metaphor of light as con­ti­nu­ity, im­plied in Ques­nel's quote: "In these rep­re­sen­ta­tions of Jacmelians and Jacmelian ar­chi­tec­ture I em­ploy the opaque qual­i­ty of vel­lum and the cast-shad­ow cre­at­ed by the hu­man form in or­der to con­sid­er the ghost­ly pres­ence or spec­tral na­ture of a ru­in­scape. These rep­re­sen­ta­tions use the hu­man form to speak of loss of life and habi­ta­tion as well as the ubiq­ui­tous pres­ence of that loss with­in the ex­tant ru­in­scape."

With many of the draw­ings one is first struck by the in­con­gruity of the jux­ta­posed skewed per­spec­tive (a re­al­i­ty of the ar­bi­trary re-align­ment of planes caused by the quake) and the in­tri­cate ar­chi­tec­tur­al de­tail. In some of draw­ings, like Spi­ral 2012, there's an over-ex­posed qual­i­ty of light, which both suf­fus­es and ob­scures, pow­er­ful­ly sug­gest­ing im­per­ma­nence and the hazy re­call of mem­o­ry. But what dis­tin­guish­es John­son's in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the Hait­ian ru­ins from those of Eu­ro­pean artists and an­ti­quar­i­ans who doc­u­ment­ed the ru­ins of Rome and Greece dur­ing the Neo-Clas­si­cal era is the in­ter­po­la­tion of the con­tem­po­rary hu­man form. Whether it is the stylised man hold­ing a blind ba­by who dwarfs a hud­dle of build­ings be­low him (View from Rue Sey­mour Pradel, 2012); the mo­tor­bike rid­ers perched pre­car­i­ous­ly above an arch (Rue de Com­merce 2011), or the fig­ure with a loaded tray on its head seem­ing­ly fol­low­ing its own shad­ow (Marche en fer 2011) this ev­i­dence of life and the or­di­nary cap­tures both the ex­tra­or­di­nary re­al­i­ty of sur­vival and con­ti­nu­ity amid the "fault" Ques­nel cites and the to­tal dis­rup­tion of a built en­vi­ron­ment, an ab­sence which is ob­vi­at­ed by the mem­o­ries and sto­ries of the sur­vivors.

John­son her­self de­scribes these lev­i­ta­tion­al fig­ures as "top­pling" the build­ings, a fe­lic­i­tous pun, as they lit­er­al­ly "top" the falling struc­tures and vi­su­al­ly sug­gest the tran­scen­dence and con­ti­nu­ity amid ab­sence Ques­nel drew at­ten­tion to.John­son's three pre­vi­ous shows (Tread­ing wa­ter over dead coral when you're feel­ing blue 2007, Red, ap­pro­pri­at­ed 2009 and Black-Gold, play­ing with oil 2010) all fo­cused on var­i­ous as­pects of trau­ma, whether per­son­al, so­ci­etal or en­vi­ron­men­tal, a con­cep­tu­al con­ti­nu­ity recog­nised by UWI lec­tur­er Pat Mo­hammed, one of the as­ses­sors at her first post­grad pre­sen­ta­tion, "who joined up the dots."Hav­ing re-fo­cused her re­search and stud­ied so­ci­o­log­i­cal re­ports of post-quake ac­tiv­i­ty fol­low­ing such ma­jor quakes as San Fran­cis­co 1906 and Mex­i­co City 1985, in an ef­fort to "not es­sen­tialise" what had hap­pened in Haiti, John­son sought a shift from the neg­a­tives which world me­dia had cir­cu­lat­ed.Her lived ex­pe­ri­ence as a Caribbean artist-in-res­i­dence as it were, on her eight trips to Jacmel in­formed her work. She was ac­cept­ed as a fel­low artist rather than viewed as an out­sider, whether tourist, aid work­er or an­thro­pol­o­gist. And while the theme of ab­sence pre­sent­ed it­self both lit­er­al­ly (peo­ple who'd died or mi­grat­ed; the dev­as­tat­ed ar­chi­tec­ture; de­for­esta­tion) and metaphor­i­cal­ly, ab­stract ab­sence be­came per­son­alised in the sto­ries and mem­o­ries of Jacmelians like Am­broise, the rub­ble artist, who could point to places he'd lived or gone to school.

"Every­one is aware of the his­to­ry of the town. Every­one has a sto­ry con­nect­ed to the build­ings. Build­ings from 1838 or 1888 are still func­tion­ing. The way a Hait­ian views his­toric build­ings and his/her her­itage is very dif­fer­ent from the way a Tri­ni views them. The pres­i­den­tial palace in Port-au-Prince caved in due to the quake. Here the Pres­i­dent's house col­lapsed due to ne­glect."

It may well be for all our "de­vel­op­ment" in T&T, we have lost both a sense of con­ti­nu­ity and a sen­si­tiv­i­ty to the light which il­lu­mi­nates mem­o­ry and "the lay­ers of mean­ing" stored in the built en­vi­ron­ment.John­son's ex­hi­bi­tion pro­vides view­ers with in­sights in­to the grace and po­et­ry of sur­viv­ing Hait­ian ar­chi­tec­ture but most of all her fig­ures, which "top­ple" these spaces and places, re­mind us of the tru­ism that "Life goes on." As John­son says "Amid the rub­ble of the ru­in­scape men and women go to work; kids go to school; turkeys, char­coal are tak­en to be sold in the mar­ket." Hu­man ac­tiv­i­ty con­tin­ues whether it's par­ties, rid­ing mo­tor­bikes, the Fri­day af­ter-work lime or fam­i­ly Sun­day on the beach.If liv­ing and work­ing in Jacmel have un­doubt­ed­ly in­formed her work, when it comes to her work, she em­pha­sis­es "It's graphite and pa­per, light, line, tone, vol­ume, per­spec­tive you're deal­ing with." It's al­so her work on pa­per, which will in­form the the­o­ry of the writ­ten dis­ser­ta­tion she's re­quired to sub­mit.For John­son it's the re­sponse to her show when it trav­els to the Al­liance Fran­caise in Jacmel in No­vem­ber that she's most con­cerned with. "To hear the peo­ple there say 'She did my town jus­tice; she did jus­tice to my sto­ry and lived ex­pe­ri­ence; she didn't es­sen­tialise."

IN­FO:Ky­wnn John­son's ex­hi­bi­tion How the Light En­ters con­tin­ues at Soft Box Art Gallery un­til Oc­to­ber 21.

QUOTE: John­son's ex­hi­bi­tion pro­vides view­ers with in­sights in­to the grace and po­et­ry of sur­viv­ing Hait­ian ar­chi­tec­ture but most of all her fig­ures, which "top­ple" these spaces and places, re­mind us of the tru­ism that "Life goes on."