Pres­ence, an ex­hi­bi­tion of Irénée Shaw’s re­cent work, opens on Mon­day at Y Art and Fram­ing Gallery, 26 Tay­lor Street, Wood­brook. The of­fi­cial open­ing re­cep­tion takes place from 4 pm to 7 pm.

Shaw, a fig­u­ra­tive painter, left for the Unit­ed States at the age of 20 to fur­ther her ed­u­ca­tion and end­ed up study­ing vi­su­al art, al­though her ini­tial in­ter­est was in dance. She grad­u­at­ed from the Mary­land In­sti­tute Col­lege of Art in Bal­ti­more with a de­gree in fine art, and lat­er earned an MFA from the Ma­son Gross School of Arts at Rut­gers Uni­ver­si­ty.

Af­ter she re­turned to Trinidad in 1988, Shaw es­tab­lished a prac­tice as a painter much sought af­ter for her abil­i­ty to pro­duce un­usu­al por­traits.

She has shown her work lo­cal­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly and has done nu­mer­ous com­mis­sions in the Caribbean and in Ger­many, in­clud­ing the Cli­co Pi­o­neers of the Caribbean Cal­en­dar se­ries in 1995. Shaw was a res­i­dent at the Ver­mont Artist Stu­dios in 2002 and has taught art at Holy Name Con­vent, Port-of-Spain, since 2003.

In a re­view of Shaw’s lat­est works, Shan­non Alon­zo writes that Pres­ence “asks us to ex­am­ine our re­la­tion­ship to the spaces we in­hab­it and the im­print we leave in ne­go­ti­at­ing these land­scapes.”

“It en­cour­ages a (phys­i­cal) shift­ing of per­spec­tive, an in­tro­spec­tion that con­sid­ers what was hid­den from view in the an­ar­chy of the ba­nal. The every­day that pre­ced­ed iso­la­tion. Cre­at­ed through­out the pan­dem­ic, the artist’s work nar­rates a de­sire to seek ease in the un­ease, the land thus be­com­ing a co-con­spir­a­tor in this search.

“As the pri­mor­dial keep­er of iden­ti­ty, col­lec­tive mem­o­ry, and be­long­ing, our en­vi­ron­ment shifts in­ter­mit­tent­ly be­tween nar­ra­tor and pro­tag­o­nist in the sto­ry of peo­ples. These works jour­ney through ex­ter­nal and em­bod­ied spaces, invit­ing the view­er to con­tem­plate the heal­ing of seclu­sion.

Irénée Shaw

“Shaw cites the as­cent of the cam­era phone as an ar­ti­fi­cial ap­pendage, and the ease with which we cu­rate and crop our own im­age, as hav­ing in­formed her com­po­si­tion­al ap­proach.

“In dig­i­tal realms, the body is rarely whole, but in­stead a frag­ment of it­self, echo­ing on­ly the facets per­mit­ted to be seen. Own­er­ship of our bod­ies is re­lin­quished, and we con­sent to be­ing dis­sect­ed, dis­placed, and dis­persed through vir­tu­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion.

The artist’s pre­vi­ous works (such as Veils and the Ver­mont se­ries) dealt with iso­la­tion of the fe­male form in sim­i­lar fash­ion, for ex­am­ple through re­cur­ring mo­tifs of the mouth, ex­plor­ing the fas­ci­na­tion with and over­sex­u­al­i­sa­tion of cer­tain or­gans. The em­pha­sis in Pres­ence, how­ev­er, is the non-in­va­sive lan­guage of touch, through the hands and feet, in re­la­tion to or­gan­ic mat­ter.

There is a sense that the lethar­gy and dis­con­nect brought about by en­forced phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing has been rec­on­ciled in these mo­ments of im­pact with the land; a ves­sel whose ex­is­tence we of­ten mar­gin­alise, in favour of con­crete com­forts and the cap­i­tal­ist al­lure of all that is “man-made.” Shaw asks us to strip away these pre­tens­es and con­sid­er how the con­tours of our own form might ad­here to the shape of our sur­round­ings.

“Tra­di­tion­al con­cep­tions of fo­cal point are up­end­ed in the se­ries of small hinged can­vas­es, which re­volt against their lin­ear place­ment. This in­tru­sion on the path of the ob­serv­er on­ly serves to re­mind us that we must de­con­struct our no­tion of per­spec­tive, piv­ot­ing to ap­pre­hend en­tan­gled view­points. Op­u­lent, dense fo­liage pro­vides a cam­ou­flage for the hu­man pres­ence, in some in­stances com­plete­ly ob­scured as the view­er changes po­si­tion. Pickin Co­coa de­picts a par­tic­u­lar­ly del­i­cate en­counter be­tween hand and fruit, both sum­mon­ing and re­ject­ing res­o­nances of Eden, a theme Shaw has in­ter­ro­gat­ed in past works. Here, an ecosys­tem is con­struct­ed in which the fe­male body can sit in har­mo­ny with cre­ation, re­fus­ing the lega­cies of ex­trac­tion which have char­ac­terised our re­la­tion­ship to land­scape since the ad­vent of im­pe­r­i­al sys­tems.

Beach Sand

Shaun Rambarran

“Many of the works main­tain a sub­tle anonymi­ty through crop­ping, ex­cept for the rich­ly lay­ered por­traits of the artist’s daugh­ter. In these, we are able to glimpse the in­ti­ma­cy which on­ly re­veals it­self in a re­la­tion­ship of com­plete fa­mil­iar­i­ty. My Mo­ment of­fers a fig­ure sub­mit­ting to the el­e­ments, as skin is ma­nip­u­lat­ed and shat­tered by the lace of shad­ow.

“These dis­tor­tions sub­sume the hu­man form, em­brac­ing it as part of the raw, un­pre­ten­tious sur­round­ings. It speaks to a de­colo­nial fem­i­nism, one which does not ask us to sit­u­ate our be­ing with­in the op­pres­sive struc­tures of an in­dus­tri­alised ter­rain. In a time when women’s bod­ies (still) en­dure the om­nipresent threat of phys­i­cal and rep­re­sen­ta­tion­al vi­o­lence, a re­turn to the soil, to wa­ter, seems to con­sti­tute a rad­i­cal act.

How dare we es­cape to soli­tude? To a con­nec­tion that is not en­cum­bered by this in­tim­i­da­tion?

As Saidiya Hart­man writes, “How does one claim the ca­pac­i­ty to touch when touch is, in so many in­stances, the modal­i­ty of vi­o­lence?” In these works, Shaw re­claims this right to touch, to lib­er­a­tion through vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty and the rec­on­cil­i­a­tion of self, which can take place on­ly in com­mu­nion with the nat­ur­al world.”

Piece of Paradise