Sean Drakes

Why do peo­ple paint their necks with pow­der, and what is the ori­gin of that rit­u­al? Those are ques­tions that pro­voked the cu­rios­i­ty of artist Mar­lon Grif­fith for many years. His cu­rios­i­ty was deep­ened by deroga­to­ry com­ments like,| "Yuh look like fish about to fry," that are com­mon­ly slung at peo­ple sport­ing a pow­dered neck. "How does this sim­ple thing get peo­ple riled up?" won­ders Grif­fith.

"When I asked peo­ple why do they wear pow­der, most say they grew up do­ing it to keep cool. And how do they feel when peo­ple make com­ments? A lot don't care, some feel re­al­ly hurt."

In 2009, Grif­fith, an il­lus­tra­tor from Bel­mont who lives in Nagoya, Japan, con­struct­ed a pho­to­graph­ic project around pow­dered necks, ti­tled The Pow­der Box School­girl Se­ries. He cast girls in school uni­forms and in­cor­po­rat­ed icon­ic lo­gos in­to his nar­ra­tive on brand­ing black bod­ies. "Com­ing from a Car­ni­val back­ground I thought it would be in­ter­est­ing to use it as a kind of in­ter­ven­tion to com­ment on things that are hap­pen­ing around us, and to em­pow­er the per­son that is wear­ing the pow­der. "It was key to pick spe­cif­ic schools where the pow­der-neck girls are. I at­tend­ed Tran­quil­li­ty (Gov­ern­ment Sec­ondary)," says Grif­fith, 35, "which is one of those schools." "Around the cor­ner was St Joseph's Con­vent-you wouldn't find a girl in St Joseph's with pow­der around her neck. It comes from your back­ground, class, the kind of peo­ple you in­ter­act with. "Most peo­ple, when they see it, get dis­gust­ed by it. For me, do­ing that part with the school­girls brought up a big­ger di­a­logue with the brand­ing. Brand­ing plays a very big part of ur­ban cul­ture here.

Every­body wants to look like the rap­per on TV. Hav­ing the stu­dent wear (a lo­go) im­age says a lot about where a young (per­son's) head is at, and the kind of in­ter­ac­tions they have with peo­ple. It says a lot about the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem and how stu­dents and ed­u­ca­tors per­ceive each oth­er, and the kind of re­la­tion­ships they have. Grif­fith's Pow­der Box project first re­ceived at­ten­tion for a show­ing in Con­necti­cut. "Right af­ter that (cu­ra­tors) start­ed pick­ing up this im­age, it was every­where-ex­cept in Trinidad. It was be­ing pub­lished and writ­ten about, I won a Guggen­heim. Still noth­ing here," notes Grif­fith. Last Ju­ly, Grif­fith's im­ages fi­nal­ly sur­faced in Trinidad, on a ra­dio sta­tion's Face­book page. They were post­ed with­out cred­it and out of con­text with the cap­tion, "Nex lev­el Pow­der­neck...would you wear it?"

The most vile com­ment Grif­fith no­ticed on that thread read: "These young women look like pros­ti­tutes, on­ly pros­ti­tutes wear pow­der around their neck like that." In the three years since Grif­fith mi­grat­ed, he was award­ed a two-year John Si­mon Guggen­heim Fel­low­ship and a Com­mon­wealth Con­nec­tions arts res­i­den­cy. He has tak­en a wife, Akiko, has a son, So­ra (ten-months-old), learned to write and speak Japan­ese, mount­ed in­stal­la­tions in Japan, and ad­just­ed to a di­et of fish, brown rice, veg­eta­bles and to­fu. "I am very hap­py. I'm not a starv­ing artist in Japan."

In the trav­el nar­ra­tive The Mid­dle Pas­sage by VS Naipaul, the au­thor is on board the Span­ish im­mi­grant ship Fran­cis­co Bobadil­la, bound for Trinidad. Grif­fith re­turns to Bel­mont to ex­pand his Pow­der Se­ries with the in­stal­la­tion project The Bal­lad of Fran­cis­co Bobadil­la, which ref­er­ences Naipaul's nar­ra­tive on re­la­tion­ships in un­com­fort­able space. The project will be un­veiled to­day at 7 pm at the Grander­son Lab, 24 Erthig Road, Bel­mont.

"I am us­ing gal­vanise to keep a con­nec­tion to all that gal­vanise you see when you look out the win­dows," ex­plains Grif­fith. "I want­ed to sim­u­late the idea of walk­ing down a street or a lane-Bel­mont has many tight lanes. There's a voyeuris­tic qual­i­ty mov­ing around these spaces. De­pend­ing on where you live, if you open your win­dow you might be look­ing in­to some­one's bed­room. Many streets run in­to some­body's house or a dead end."

A pro­jec­tion of a girl ap­ply­ing pow­der takes view­ers in­to per­son­al space and pro­vides a link to his Pow­der Box Se­ries. "With this (Bobadil­la project) I de­cid­ed to fo­cus on the re­la­tion­ships of peo­ple with­in a par­tic­u­lar com­mu­ni­ty...nav­i­gat­ing try­ing to be com­fort­able in an un­com­fort­able en­vi­ron­ment. Since I've been back I've found the en­vi­ron­ment to be much more un­com­fort­able. There are more po­lice pa­trols in Bel­mont. Yes­ter­day a woman's throat was slit around the cor­ner. A lot of per­son­al spaces that I am fa­mil­iar with no longer ex­ist. The dy­nam­ics of Port-of-Spain have changed, so have the peo­ple, in re­sponse to those changes."

The Bobadil­la in­stal­la­tion is a col­lab­o­ra­tion with Al­ice Yard and took two weeks to mount. Grif­fith is re­luc­tant to ap­point a meaty artist's state­ment to the work be­cause, "Not every­body is go­ing to be con­vinced by what you say. "Peo­ple have to ex­pe­ri­ence be­fore they can make their own as­sess­ment...art is some­thing that evolves over time. As the artist you have an idea of what this thing is and what it should do, but then peo­ple make it more than what you thought it was or could be."