Lee An­na Ma­haraj

Re­porter

leean­na.ma­haraj@guardian.co.tt

Art im­i­tates life, but some­times life finds a way of con­tin­u­ing through art. For Ger­man artist and sculp­tor Luise Kimme, that con­nec­tion was forged dur­ing the decades she spent liv­ing and work­ing in To­ba­go.

In­spired by the peo­ple, cul­ture and every­day ex­pe­ri­ences around her, Kimme found a wealth of ma­te­r­i­al for her art on the is­land she even­tu­al­ly called home.

Through her wood­en sculp­tures, Kimme cap­tured more than phys­i­cal like­ness­es. Her fig­ures re­flect­ed the per­son­al­i­ties and move­ments of the peo­ple she en­coun­tered, pre­serv­ing some­thing of To­ba­go’s cul­tur­al life in each piece.

Born in Ger­many in 1939, Kimme was al­ready a well-es­tab­lished artist be­fore mak­ing To­ba­go her home. She stud­ied sculp­ture in Berlin and Lon­don be­fore be­com­ing a pro­fes­sor at the Kun­stakademie Düs­sel­dorf in Ger­many, where she taught for more than two decades.

Her move to To­ba­go in 1979 marked an im­por­tant chap­ter in her artis­tic jour­ney, as she in­creas­ing­ly ex­plored the is­land’s peo­ple, folk­lore and cul­tur­al tra­di­tions through her work.

She died on the is­land in April 2013, aged 74, but her artis­tic lega­cy con­tin­ues through the sculp­tures she left be­hind. Her home and stu­dio in Bethel, known as The Cas­tle, al­so be­came a mu­se­um ded­i­cat­ed to her work, hous­ing a col­lec­tion of her sculp­tures.

It was dur­ing a vis­it to the prop­er­ty that French Am­bas­sador to Trinidad and To­ba­go, Guil­laume Pierre, first en­coun­tered Kimme’s work.

“I mean, the first time I went in­to a room in which there were six stat­ues like this, they were close to each oth­er, and I had the im­pres­sion they were about to move. They were about to talk to me. They were en­gag­ing in some­thing with me. Im­me­di­ate­ly, I had a kind of di­a­logue with those wood­en peo­ple, and im­me­di­ate­ly I thought I have to wel­come them home one day,” Pierre re­called.

Pierre added that bring­ing to­geth­er a col­lec­tion of Kimme’s sculp­tures was par­tic­u­lar­ly mean­ing­ful, as he felt the ef­fort not on­ly paid trib­ute to the late artist but al­so al­lowed her pieces to be re­unit­ed and ap­pre­ci­at­ed to­geth­er.

“I have the feel­ing that they are hap­py to be to­geth­er. And many peo­ple who come and vis­it this ex­hi­bi­tion are al­so very stunned by this al­most recre­at­ed vil­lage or group of peo­ple. It’s a com­mu­ni­ty that has been recre­at­ed in this house, and this is one thing I’m very proud of, is that by putting to­geth­er these 25 pieces, it’s prob­a­bly one of the biggest ever Kimme gath­er­ings,” he said.

Asked about the de­ci­sion to show­case the work of a Ger­man-born artist at the French Em­bassy, Pierre ex­plained that Kimme’s na­tion­al­i­ty was sec­ondary to the cul­tur­al sig­nif­i­cance of her work and her deep con­nec­tion with To­ba­go.

“The na­tion­al­i­ty of cre­ators is not re­al­ly what we’re in­ter­est­ed in. What we’re in­ter­est­ed in is the pow­er of what they cre­ate. I think Luise Kimme was born in Ger­many, but she’s a world artist, and she got in­spired in To­ba­go. I’m am­bas­sador to Trinidad and To­ba­go, so what hap­pens in the arts and cul­ture in Trinidad and To­ba­go is some­thing that I’m in­ter­est­ed in,” he ex­plained.

For Pierre, the abil­i­ty of art to pre­serve and share these cul­tur­al ex­pres­sions is par­tic­u­lar­ly im­por­tant in a world grap­pling with nu­mer­ous chal­lenges.

“The world is not easy nowa­days. There are many prob­lems all over the place. And hav­ing artists who beau­ti­fy the world, hav­ing artists who give us an in­ter­pre­ta­tion of what it is to be a hu­man be­ing, what it is to be con­nect­ed to na­ture [is im­por­tant]. The wood­en pieces are hu­man, and show us what it is to dance, be­cause we have sev­er­al pieces around dance, and that re­con­nects us to our soul. This is what art is about. This is what cul­ture is about,” he said.

The ex­hi­bi­tion is open to the pub­lic every Fri­day through­out No­vem­ber and the em­bassy is en­cour­ag­ing vis­i­tors to reg­is­ter in ad­vance.

Fur­ther in­for­ma­tion is avail­able on the French Em­bassy to Trinidad and To­ba­go’s so­cial me­dia pages.