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Irénée Shaw is a
practicing artist living and working in Trinidad. She is a
figurative painter . She has shown her work locally and
internationally since her return from study in the United States
in 1988.
The artist has done
numerous commissions in the Caribbean and in Germany. Most
notably the CLICO “Pioneers of the Caribbean” Calendar series
in 1995.
The artist was a resident
at the Vermont Artist Studios in 2002.
Education
1983-1986 BFA
Painting, The Maryland Institute, College of Art, Baltimore, Maryland, USA
1985
Studio Art Centres International, Florence, Italy.
1986-1988 MFA
Visual Arts, Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University
New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA
Teaching
1989-2003
Teaching Artist workshops at the Visual Arts Environment &
Caribbean Contemporary Arts ( CCA7)
1989-1994
Special Teacher 2, Tranquillity Government Secondary School
UWI Extra Mural (during the same
period)
1986-1988
Teaching assistantships at Rutgers University.
Solo Exhibitions
1989
Aquarela Galleries, Port of Spain, Trinidad.
1992
“Things perceived and Conceived,” The Barbados Museum &
Historical Society
Bridgetown, Barbados
1993
“Gilded Cages”, Aquarela Galleries, Port of Spain, Trinidad.
1995
“Pioneers of the Caribbean,” One person exhibition of portraits
commissioned
By Colonial Life Insurance Company, National Museum, Port of
Spain, Trinidad
1997
Private exhibition in Cologne and commissions in Germany.
1998
“Self Portrayals”, Caribbean Contemporary Art Programme,
Laventille, Trinidad.
Group Exhibitions
1988
“From Myth and Experience” 3 Caribbean Artists, Gallery Caribe,
Philadelphia,
Selected Artists from the Rutgers Centre for Innovative
Printmaking,
E.T.S. Building, Princeton, New Jersey, U.S.A
R.U. Artists, Group Exhibition, 112 Green Street, New York,
U.S.A.
1992
“Alternative Expressions,” Carifesta V, Crossover Designs,
66A Woodford St., Port of Spain,
Trinidad.
1994
2nd Biennial of the Caribbean and Central America, Museum of
Modern Art
Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic
1996
Four Contemporary Artists from Trinidad, Trinidad Art Society,
POS, Trinidad
1997
“Six Visions ”, Willemstad, Curaçao.
“V Salon de dibujo de Santo Domingo”, Museum of Modern Art, Santo
Domingo
Dominican Republic
1998
VI Biennial of Painting, Cuenca, Ecuador.
"Lips, Sticks and Marks", The Arts Foundry, Barbados
The National Museum, Trinidad
XEME, Festival international de la peinture,
Les Musees De Cagnes sur Mer, France
Sing me a Rainbow, Meridian international centre , Washington , US
A
1999
“Big River 1” International Workshop, National Museum
Annex Gallery
Trinidad
1999
" Urban Life in the Caribbean" , Dominican Republic/ Haiti
2001
IADB Gallery,
Washington, DC
Publications
2nd Biennial of the
Caribbean and Central America, Museum of Modern Art, Dominican
Republic
Four Contemporary Artists
from Trinidad
“Six Visions ”, Willemstad,
Curaçao.
VI Biennial of Painting,
Cuenca, Ecuador.
"Lips, Sticks and Marks"
XEME, Festival international de la peinture. Les Musees De Cagnes
sur Mer, France.
“Big River 1”
International Workshop
Sing me a Rainbow,
Meridian international centre , Washington , USA
Caribe Insular, Exclusion, Fragmentacion y Paraiso, Casa de
Americas, Spain
Review Noir, France
Small Axe issues # 5 &
#6,
Nka, The journal of
Contemporary African Art
Urban Life in the
Caribbean, Cariforo
MACO, December, 2001
Artist Statement
People deprived of their
history can make up their own, and what better job can there be
for an artist shifting through the anxieties of a Post-Colonial
society, where the divide between myth and actual experience often
disintegrates and we find ourselves in a unique contemporary
space.
Over the years, I have been
developing a series of self portraits, which are highly
personalized and subjective attempts at analyzing the cultural
climate in which I exist. While most times we are comfortable with
the female face and figure being observed through various forms
of art, in this work I am insisting that the person who has been
observing her self (the subject) and the maker of the subject are
the same. Because of this , I have concentrated on my own mirror
image. I have gone further into this to the point that the
investigations rarely shifted from my own body.
As a Caribbean person, in
the the light of our historical circumstances, the assertion of
my own narrative and presence is important. At one of my first
exhibitions, one viewer warily proclaimed "Who she feel she is to
paint she self on such a big canvas?! She must feel she is
somebody" In my work I am responding to this self consciousness;
this arena of doubt.
Traditionally, we have
never completely controlled or had a share in the historical
constructions or the configurations of mass-media that label us
and therefore we always run the risk of being misrepresented. I
recall being being told by a well respected artist that that if I
wanted to make "serious paintings", I had to avoid using too much
colour. Needless to say, I did not buy this. I continue to
challenge the notion that one has to live and work in a place
covered by a grey haze to have a "real" and "serious" life. Years
later I even found myself making a large black and white painting
in response to this and then had fun decorating and violating it
with beautiful pink and red artificial flowers.
So, I continue to desecrate
canvas with my image of myself and its attendant decorations
trying to figure for myself who owns them and their meaning. This
brings me to another arena where I have tried to synthesize forms
that have traditionally been considered "low art" For example, in
my work I am not worried by the usual association with domesticity
because of the use of fabric, lace and artificial flowers as these
are often some of the tools used to find a creative outlet within
the confines of the domestic space.
Groups of family portraits
on top of a well crocheted centre pieces are familiar alters of
adoration to us all. I take the alleged lofty art practices such
as figuration in oils on canvas and use the elements found in that
female dominated interior world to contaminate the canvas with my
singular vision. Out of this, the space from which my work
evolves is defined.
These elements of self
exploration in the work have continuously manifested themselves in
what I call "visual dramas" in which the chief role was acted out
by the artist herself. Now, they have evolved to enlist the
assistance of archetypes who begin to carry the narrative- off the
wall- into real space even as they leave some of the trappings of
the introspective interior world behind.
The "Queen of Grande
Riviere" appears to disrupt the flatness of the supporting wall
behind. It creates facets which seem to "face off" or mirror each
portrait in which the gesture of her turning head is depicted. As
your eye moves across each frame in this accordion like structure
I present her carrying her ceremonial bouquet through our life's
emotional stages.
By enlisting models and
painting on a life sized triangular shaped structure that borders
on polychrome sculpture, Adam and Eve and their struggle become
cast in a drama about my response to some of societies standard
roles. As they are thrust into the viewers physical space, they
can also enlist them as other players in my psycho drama.
Even though the work has
often shifted in and out of the third dimension before, the
painted surface has now become another element in relation to the
object status of the work. The object asserts an occupation of
real space while at the same time combines it with a rendering of
space that causes the viewer to have to deal with the visual
sensation as well as the physical impact.
But all along, We, in
places like this, have never had a problem taking what we need to
"play a mas"; the individually created persona in the theater of
the street that is Carnival. Be it a "Red Indian" or a "Fancy
Sailor" the representation is inevitably transformed and now we
find ourselves in a circumstance where to play yourself is the
most popular part and one that is not limited merely to two days
of carnival revelry.
The original significance
of the role played is reconfigured to suit ones personal history,
experiences , likes and dislikes .The creation of spectacle to
rival any old Hollywood film is second nature to us in this
process and the ultimate challenge for the real performer/creator
has always been to assert their individual presence in space. T
his is why I like and I am drawn to the the idea of a "visual
drama", the title of my last exhibition being 'Self Portrayals'. |
