Art in theTime
of
Coronavirus
Wendy Nanan and Marsha Pearce in Conversation
Art in theTime
of
Coronavirus
During the coronavirus lockdown in Trinidad and Tobago, artist Wendy Nanan maintained her daily art making practice – an undertaking that has not been easy or possible for all creative practitioners in this moment of anxiety about our collective present and future. Dr. Marsha Pearce, Lecturer and Visual Arts Unit Coordinator at Lectu the Department of Creative and Festival Arts, UWI St. Augustine Campus, invited Nanan to talk about her recent work. Art in the Time of Coronavirus documents their conversation.
Wendy Nanan at Medulla Art Gallery, Trinidad, 2019. Photograph courtesy Andil Gosine.
Wendy Nanan and Marsha Pearce
in conversation
Marsha Pearce: You have been drawing from life for decades. Your cricket drawings have garnered critical acclaim and I am so pleased that they are now on display at the Art Museum of the Americas in Washington DC. Yet, cricket matches are not your only source for considering the art of the human form. Part of your practice has involved attending the live model/human figure drawing events hosted at Medulla Art Gallery and at the Art Society of Trinidad and Tobago. I know you sketch on site and return home with the images to develop them. Have you given time to figure drawing during lockdown? Wendy Nanan: Staying at home, working, is my daily practice. I have learned that one needs that intensity of quiet practice to reach any depth of understanding of the work that you are currently doing. During lockdown I continued my work. However, I have missed the sessions of life drawing held by Medulla and the Art Society. I note that the Art Society intends to restart this month [July] with protocols in place for models and artists to be safe. In the meantime, I have been making up landscapes or environments in which to place the nude figures of the last drawings I created before lockdown. Why? Why enhance a perfectly good life drawing? Why not? It is just another extension of the creative process – exercising your imagination muscle.
4
Someone asked me if, when drawing in the class, I had any idea of how I was going to develop the drawing. No, that happens at home when I have lived with the drawings a while and they have spoken to me. In the drawing class you coldly and rationally reduce the body to an inanimate object, rendering mass, line and perspective. The magic then is to turn them into images of primal power and erotic innuendo. When I develop the images at home, I am writing stories which stretch beyond the pictures. Plausible stories, I hope. My previous drawings include: A sadhu reads a holy book, naked as they can be, cloaked with a shawl of landscape; Two boys tryst around a campfire at night, eyes from the jungle observe them and The god mother births the universes.
Opposite page: Wendy Nanan Two boys tryst around a campfire at night, eyes from the jungle observe them, 2017.
5
6
Wendy Nanan A sadhu reads a holy book, naked as they can be, cloaked with a shawl of landscape, 2016.
7
Wendy Nanan The god mother births the universes, 2017.
8
“It is the brevity required by a work that I always want to find”
9
May you tell me about one or more of these stories you are visualising/writing with your new drawings? Are there aspects of a drawing that might spark your imagination and trigger a narrative? In one of my latest drawings, the figures were positioned in such a way as to reflect an economy of the use of the paper. I started with the middle figure in the meditation pose and continued by fitting in two other poses to use up the space at the top and the bottom. Imagine it without the blue wash in the background. The meditating figure becomes the central focus controlling the others, as if she has brought them into the astral plane through her thought control. They are manifestations of her other selves; relaxing and stretching in a state of female ennui. The addition of the uneven blue wash gives an aura of otherworldliness. In the drawing the figures read as belonging together. It is the same model – three separate poses, now working together to create a narrative. The drawing may yet change again, but I am kind of happy with it, in its simplicity. Sometimes it is knowing when to do just enough and stop. It is the brevity required by a work that I always want to find.
10
12
“The work must have the power to speak for itself through its visual seduction�
13
15
You have been collecting shells at Manzanilla beach for many years. You’ve used the collection for your incredible sculptures made of shells and papier mâché. What is the significance of the shell to you? Why have you been working with this material, and has it found its way into more recent art pieces? Since I was a child, playing on the beaches of Manzanilla/Mayaro, I have been enthralled by the beauty and diversity of shells. Growing older,
I
bought
books
to
identify
and
understand
how
seashells/molluscs were formed and found throughout the Caribbean. I learned about the various types (the chitons, spirula, helmets, cones, turrets, periwinkles, conchs) and how easy they are to obtain. Making collections – lost and restarted through the decades – shells are memories of time, places and people. Having multiples, one thinks of patterns; of movement across a surface, reinforcing the womb-like cavity of a Palmiste palm bract with the feminine curves of the shell. The process, itself, of shell collecting: the drive through country roads to the coconut estates, the endless sea and soft yielding sand, the smells, breezes, a picnic day out, is also necessary for one's well-being. I was asked by artist and curator Ashraph to take part in a portrait exhibition. That started me down a path of something I had been thinking about since I began working with shells: handling them – and this is so important – the touch of their brittle, smooth curves and pointy bits, they evoke nuances of facial features that could be reinvented into portraits. This looks like a nose, this could be a mouth with teeth, that broken shell the inside of an ear. So, I have been putting together portraits, using the shells that I have at hand. This has been on the back burner for so many years. The time is now.
16
17
18
I have been hindered by not being able to go to the beach during lockdown to collect, but finally, I can start to search again. Shells are such beautiful creations, which have given me so much pleasure to collect; deserving of another reincarnation after their lifespan. – Wendy Nanan
20
Images of Wendy Nanan at Manzanilla courtesy Andil Gosine. Photographs of artwork and dolls courtesy Wendy Nanan.
Publication design and layout by Marsha Pearce. Š 2020