An es­say by­Mar­sha Pearce

"Much of the vi­su­al trea­sures of the re­gion lies out­side of the Caribbean," writes Pa­tri­cia Mo­hammed in her book Imag­ing the Caribbean. Her state­ment comes to mind in the wake of the Gov­ern­ment's re­cent ac­qui­si­tion of paint­ings by Michel-Jean Caz­abon via auc­tion in the UK and the en­su­ing re­spons­es. A key word in Mo­hammed's ob­ser­va­tion is "trea­sure." What does T&T deem valu­able? How is val­ue un­der­stood?

One un­der­stand­ing of val­ue is that of ex­change–what is paid for an ob­ject. The paint­ings' ex­change val­ue, dur­ing what Gov­er­nor of the Cen­tral Bank of T&T, Jwala Ram­bar­ran has of­fi­cial­ly de­scribed as a re­ces­sion pe­ri­od for the coun­try, au­to­mat­i­cal­ly rais­es con­cern. Pub­lic ser­vants have been told they must wait for their back pay, and yet a huge sum has been mar­shalled to se­cure im­ages by a 19th cen­tu­ry Trinida­di­an artist. How can this dis­so­nance be rec­on­ciled?

Pub­lic ire can be ap­pre­ci­at­ed when viewed through the lens of Maslow's hi­er­ar­chy of needs. Abra­ham Maslow was a North Amer­i­can psy­chol­o­gist who pro­posed a the­o­ry of var­i­ous lev­els of hu­man mo­ti­va­tions or needs. Bi­o­log­i­cal needs oc­cu­py a fun­da­men­tal space: food, shel­ter. Safe­ty needs are next: se­cu­ri­ty, sta­bil­i­ty. When these needs are sat­is­fied an in­di­vid­ual then looks to a need for be­long­ing, es­teem and self-ac­tu­al­i­sa­tion. When ba­sic needs are not met, how can a peo­ple be ex­pect­ed to hold "old im­ages" dear?

Yet, Maslow's frame­work is not set in stone. There are sev­er­al adapt­ed ver­sions. One show­ing Wi-Fi as the most pri­ma­ry hu­man need–usurp­ing food and air–has been cir­cu­lat­ing on the In­ter­net for some time.

That ver­sion may be re­gard­ed as amus­ing but nes­tled with­in the hu­mour is a sober­ing com­men­tary about chang­ing ne­ces­si­ties, about the po­ten­tial for shift­ing what is seen as req­ui­site and the new weight or val­ue giv­en to as­pects of life.

This ref­er­ence to Wi-Fi rais­es an­oth­er un­der­stand­ing of val­ue: use val­ue. This type of val­ue speaks to the func­tion of an ob­ject, in oth­er words, what it does. T&T is still grap­pling with the use val­ue of art­works.

Ex­cept for a con­ve­nient tout­ing of cre­ativ­i­ty with­in the en­ter­pris­es of Car­ni­val and tourism, the so­ci­ety is still to be nur­tured to see what art can do for it. While art is a per­son­al and col­lec­tive space for ex­plor­ing, sub­vert­ing, build­ing, mask­ing, re­veal­ing and re­solv­ing ideas, mean­ings and emo­tions, it re­mains, in large mea­sure, on the mar­gins of a hi­er­ar­chy of needs in T&T.

How might T&T re­for­mu­late that hi­er­ar­chy to in­clude the arts? The ac­qui­si­tion of Caz­abon's paint­ings points so­ci­ety in a di­rec­tion of much need­ed fo­cus on art and cul­tur­al her­itage or in­her­i­tance–on the sub­ject of the lega­cy of tan­gi­ble and in­tan­gi­ble el­e­ments of T&T's be­ing and be­com­ing.

Their pur­chase al­so un­der­scores the spe­cif­ic con­cept of pat­ri­mo­ny, that idea of own­er­ship and be­long­ing to a par­tic­u­lar peo­ple. Again Mo­hammed's words are sig­nif­i­cant be­cause she notes that a num­ber of vi­su­al ob­jects cre­at­ed by Caribbean peo­ple lie out­side the re­gion.

Shouldn't Caz­abon's work re­side here? Or, should the pieces have gone to homes and in­sti­tu­tions in oth­er parts of the world? These ques­tions linger in the midst of an­oth­er herald­ing of the end of the oil era. T&T's lega­cy can­not be sole­ly based on the va­garies of the oil and gas mar­kets. It is there­fore vi­tal to re­con­sid­er what can be safe­guard­ed and made ac­ces­si­ble for fu­ture knowl­edge mak­ers and in­ter­preters. Among those con­cerns are paint­ings, sculp­tures, man­u­scripts, build­ings and oral tra­di­tions.

If in­her­i­tance mat­ters, as the buy­ing of Caz­abon's work sug­gests, then the Gov­ern­ment can­not stop at a pur­chase of art and the mount­ing of an ex­hi­bi­tion. A broad­er and sus­tained pro­gramme of en­gage­ment is cru­cial in T&T. Ef­fort should be di­rect­ed to­ward stim­u­lat­ing what his­to­ri­an Si­mon Thur­ley calls a her­itage cy­cle, which be­gins with (and re­turns to) the fos­ter­ing of an un­der­stand­ing of art.

Through un­der­stand­ing peo­ple then come to val­ue art and by valu­ing art they will want to care for it. Car­ing then tran­si­tions to ex­pe­ri­ences of ful­fill­ment and the fu­elling of a thirst for greater un­der­stand­ing.