Fay­ola K J Fras­er

The pop­u­lar re­frain in­di­cates that “Tri­nis are every­where.” If you stand in the icon­ic Times Square in New York City and look up at the dis­plays, there too is the stun­ning, vi­su­al­ly cap­ti­vat­ing work of 26-year-old Trinida­di­an artist Brigitte (Brit­ney) Davis. Her art piece is show­cased through Art­Space In­no­va­tions. Art­Space In­no­va­tions gives artists a plat­form for the ex­hi­bi­tion of their work at train sta­tions, bill­boards, and oth­er var­i­ous plat­forms. Davis, the Los Ba­jos na­tive, has al­ways been an artist at her core and has in­trin­si­cal­ly known that her lega­cy will reach many far-flung cor­ners of the world.

Dur­ing her time as a stu­dent at Holy Faith Con­vent in Pe­nal, Davis felt that she nev­er fit in­to many tra­di­tion­al moulds. “I couldn’t see my­self work­ing in an of­fice from nine to five or be­ing a lawyer or a doc­tor. I knew I was des­tined for more.” She re­called con­sis­tent­ly get­ting in­to trou­ble with teach­ers for doo­dling and draw­ing dur­ing class, as she felt “stuck on art.” Hav­ing had a dif­fi­cult child­hood and teenage­hood due to what she said was her step­moth­er’s neg­a­tive be­hav­iour to­wards her, Davis used her art as a cop­ing mech­a­nism and a means of re­leas­ing her emo­tions. Al­though she loved and felt deeply con­nect­ed to T&T, she was even­tu­al­ly forced to leave be­cause of the ten­u­ous re­la­tion­ship with her step­moth­er, and at 16 years old, she mi­grat­ed to join her moth­er in Queens, New York. 

“It was dif­fi­cult,” she re­mem­bers. “I didn’t want to leave T&T. It was all I knew. I had to go to a new coun­try, and I didn’t know how to make friends and in­ter­act.” Davis de­scribed her­self as a lon­er who was timid, shy, and qui­et, a per­son­al­i­ty that she al­ways re­mem­bers hav­ing, and had a hard time break­ing in­to the al­ready es­tab­lished friend groups of teenage girls in the US. Once again, dur­ing this chal­leng­ing time, her art was her cop­ing mech­a­nism as she strug­gled to find her foot­ing in a new coun­try.

 In 2016, she ap­plied to col­leges, ini­tial­ly not ap­ply­ing to do art. “Peo­ple beat it in­to my head that art wasn’t a re­al job, and I need­ed to get some­thing re­al. So I just ap­plied to col­leges, not to do art but some­thing I could get a job in af­ter.” She was ac­cept­ed to the Col­lege of Stat­en Is­land to do psy­chol­o­gy, which, for Davis, was a po­ten­tial ca­reer that she was not in­ter­est­ed in. She sent a one-off ap­pli­ca­tion to the Fash­ion In­sti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy (FIT) in Man­hat­tan, a world-renowned fash­ion school, to which she ap­plied to do art and fash­ion. When she stum­bled up­on the school, she said, “It felt like me.” She ap­plied, not think­ing that she would be ac­cept­ed. Her moth­er had al­ready paid the de­posit for her to at­tend the Col­lege of Stat­en Is­land, and she was prepped to go there un­til she re­ceived with great ju­bi­la­tion, her ac­cep­tance to FIT. 

Dur­ing her four years at FIT, she suf­fered from men­tal health prob­lems in­curred by her tu­mul­tuous up­bring­ing in Trinidad. She kept re­turn­ing home in search of lost time, but on each vis­it home, she was faced with dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tions that en­cour­aged her to re­turn to the US. “At that time, my mind was work­ing dou­ble time, I was look­ing for di­rec­tion, and I ex­pressed the pain of my past through my art.” Even­tu­al­ly, Davis made an art page on In­sta­gram to post her work, and her first video, tak­en by her room­mate, of Davis putting the fin­ish­ing touch­es on an art piece “blew up” and was shared and liked by so many peo­ple “go­ing crazy for my art.” 

 In 2019, Davis part­nered with the pop­u­lar In­sta­gram page “the­shade­room”, which post­ed her art piece, a paint­ing of Bob Mar­ley, which went vi­ral, re­ceiv­ing over 30,000 likes. Davis was then fea­tured in var­i­ous mag­a­zines and art pub­li­ca­tions, and she felt that op­por­tu­ni­ties and pos­i­tiv­i­ty were com­ing her way. Then, in 2020, while still a col­lege stu­dent, Davis se­cured an in­tern­ship with Amer­i­can artist Petah Coyne, a con­tem­po­rary sculp­tor and pho­tog­ra­ph­er best known for her large-scale hang­ing sculp­tures and floor in­stal­la­tions made from di­verse ma­te­ri­als. Davis de­scribed this pe­ri­od of get­ting a first-hand look in­to the world of art in a pro­fes­sion­al con­text as “a dream come true and life-chang­ing,” and it “sealed the deal” for her that she would har­ness her art as a ca­reer go­ing for­ward. She fi­nal­ly felt “hap­pi­ness and love in my art and be­gan to re­al­ly push my­self and work as an artist.”

As the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic de­scend­ed in 2020, she be­gan feel­ing stuck. Again, she used her art as a way to trav­el, ex­plore the depths of her mind and heart, and let her work be an es­cape. Grad­u­at­ing with a Bach­e­lor’s de­gree in Fine Arts in 2020, she con­tin­ued to share her art on so­cial me­dia plat­forms and gained a large fol­low­ing. In Oc­to­ber 2023, she won a com­pe­ti­tion at a Brook­lyn art gallery, which en­ti­tled her to a so­lo ex­hi­bi­tion at the Green­point Gallery in Brook­lyn. By De­cem­ber 2023, she had cel­e­brat­ed her first so­lo ex­hib­it, which fea­tured 14 of her pieces. Of­ten us­ing her past chal­lenges as in­spi­ra­tion for her work, she de­scribed her art as “re­lat­ing to sto­ries I went through in the past and un­cov­er­ing vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty.” 

“Vi­brant Lu­lu”, which is her piece dis­played in Times Square, comes from an in­nate in­spi­ra­tion. Ac­cord­ing to Davis, “Lu-Lu is an African girl who has a colour­ful na­ture. This can be seen not on­ly through her per­son­al­i­ty but al­so in the head ties she wears. The size of the head tie is there to em­pha­sise the con­fi­dence she wears with it. She sees the world as colour­ful and ab­stract; that’s why there are gold and cream ab­stract de­signs on the left side of her. Ex­act­ly how she sees the world, that’s how I think every day too; colour­ful and ab­stract.” This piece is a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of Davis’ un­bri­dled cre­ativ­i­ty, her love for the ab­stract, mixed with her in­ter­est in fig­ures, por­traits, fan­ta­sy, and vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties. 

Brigitte Davis is do­ing ex­act­ly what she said she would do as a young girl. Cre­at­ing a lega­cy with her cre­ative ex­pres­sion is her birthright, and she is fly­ing the Tri­ni flag high through her art in one of the world’s most sig­nif­i­cant cities.