As part of her prac­tice-based MPhil de­gree in cul­tur­al stud­ies at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, Can­dice Sobers will launch an ex­hi­bi­tion of paint­ings and in­stal­la­tions and a book ti­tled The Aes­thet­ics of the Mun­dane at the Art So­ci­ety of Trinidad and To­ba­go, cor­ner of Ja­maica Boule­vard and St Vin­cent Av­enue, Fed­er­a­tion Park, on Sep­tem­ber 17.

Sobers is a con­cep­tu­al artist, with an em­pha­sis on con­tem­po­rary art prac­tice. She holds a BA in vi­su­al arts with first-class ho­n­ours. Her work has been dis­played in joint ex­hi­bi­tions at the Na­tion­al Mu­se­um, Rainy­days at Eller­slie Plaza, In2Art and at the Art So­ci­ety.

She is cur­rent­ly con­duct­ing a re­search the­sis on "Tech­niques of Re­source­ful­ness and Sur­vival Among Work­ing-Class Trinida­di­ans."

This re­search is be­ing for­mu­lat­ed as a se­ries in­clud­ing paint­ings, draw­ings and a hand­book of mixed meth­ods.

Pro­fes­sion­al­ly, Sobers is al­so a life-skills fa­cil­i­ta­tor more than five years and in­ter­nal ver­i­fi­er for the On the Job Train­ing pro­gramme with the Na­tion­al Train­ing Agency and a de­vout Ro­tar­i­an with the Port-of-Spain arm.

Sobers said her re­search is a con­tem­po­rary study which has pro­vid­ed a pur­pose­ful lens in­to the lived re­al­i­ties of work­ing-class Trinida­di­ans.

It is a pri­mar­i­ly ethno­graph­ic, qual­i­ta­tive study which ex­plores the work­ings of sur­vival, in­ven­tion and re­source­ful­ness in the man­age­ment of pover­ty, of a sam­ple group of mem­bers from six ex­tend­ed fam­i­lies.

She said the re­search seeks to an­swer the ques­tion, "what in­valu­able pro­ce­dur­al tech­niques have been con­struct­ed by the work­ing-class Trinida­di­an in the man­age­ment of pover­ty?"

Ex­plain­ing her work out­come and ra­tio­nale be­hind the ex­hi­bi­tion and book, Sobers said the fam­i­lies' ex­pe­ri­ences were record­ed for "feel­ing and en­try."

She said: "Ac­cord­ing to sen­si­tiv­i­ty to their lived ex­pe­ri­ences, a record of the mys­tery of their con­tention was recre­at­ed not as an ex­pla­na­tion but rather for feel­ing and en­try. The 'mun­dane' re­fer­ring to the day-to-day lives of the six par­tic­i­pant fam­i­lies is a sub­jec­tive term which can­not be pre­sent­ed ho­mo­ge­neous­ly."

The fam­i­lies' sur­vival mech­a­nisms have re­sult­ed in "an ag­gres­sive con­cep­tu­al, in­ter­pre­ta­tive artis­tic body of work in­clud­ing a com­bi­na­tion of paint­ings, draw­ings and craft (which) have em­bed­ded their de­scrip­tive per­spec­tives of their ba­nal­i­ty of ex­pe­ri­ences.

"By means of eth­nomethod­ol­o­gy a hand­book of 60 such re­source­ful tech­niques has been sum­marised and archived," Sobers said.