SHRAPHBLACKINDIA
Ashraph has an eye. An understanding of aesthetic that is at once educated and intuitive: What makes effective and evocative a given composition of line and form, image and shape, colour and shade, symbol and icon. He applies this eye across a range of vocations within T&T’s creative realm: artist, framer, dealer, mas bandleader, and, most recently, designer of jewelry. We are of course familiar with the realities of art-making in a small and in some ways unsophisticated market, and the need of many artists for a “day job.” But Ashraph in his quiet and incremental way seems to have evolved his own personal solution to this problem with a suite of vocations none of which is a compromise and all of which are complimentary. Especially in a small place the arts benefit from overlap and intermingling among disciplines and roles, and in this regard Ashraph appears as an admirable all-rounder. As a consequence, the artistic eye is informed by a range of perspectives. For the work in the current show, “Black Indian,” Ashraph draws upon a self-described fascination with that long-time mas character to set the collection’s theme. As in much of his past work, the artist sets up a conceptual reference, then leaves the implications of that concept ambiguous, some might say un-worked, some might say mysterious. The various meanings and parallels and resonances that the Black Indian might evoke - the fantastical invented language, the connection with past native peoples, the black one masqueing as a black other, the warrior ethic, the ritual clashes - these are left to be processed by the viewer in his or her own imagination and sense of things. Having set the evocative theme, Ashraph’s artist eye focuses in on just one of its aspects: the black-on-black aesthetics of the Black Indian face. Black shiny grease over brown-black skin, cracking and peeling and dripping under hot sun and sweat and ecstatic concentration. Imagine, in a wrinkle of time, being able to swoop in on a blazing Carnival Tuesday afternoon and hold still the Black Indian in the midst of his war-whoop, zoom the lens in on the face - what a rich complexion of subtle colour shades, textures, surfaces shiny and matte. This is what seems to catch the artist’s eye, and where he applies the “working” of the material. First to begin, the silhouette of a face. The wood had to be local cedar. Each face the artist works with fabric, lace, edgings, glue, and paint. Of course, no two are alike. The results are evocative, various, all of a family but distinct., each pleasing in its varying texture, colour, and sheen. But they are not complete. The Black Indian needs his costume. And here, an odd and rather original thing happens. Having in recent years made bold to conceive and design some pieces of jewelry, and having come to an appreciation of this concentrated and miniaturized form, Ashraph conceives of the notion that the element to finish each black textured face, its “costume” so to speak, can be a piece of jewelry. Or, perhaps another word should be found: “talisman,” perhaps, or “charm.” The Black Indian’s bonnet and bead and lance, if you will, compressed and concentrated into a little shiny object. The work of art is the assemblage of the face and its talisman. Yes, it is true that the talisman can be worn as a piece of jewelry. And yes, the Black Indian face can stand on its own. But without the jewelry/talisman the work of art is not complete. Here again, as in the mas, the artist leaves some of the life of the artwork to the bearer. Some may choose to leave it so: an artwork with a ring, say, that never is worn. Others might make bold to “engage” the work by sporting the “jewelry.” One imagines that in such a circumstance the wearing of the talisman might take on something of ritual and occasion, to be extracted from its mount like the sword from the stone, and replaced afterward with flourish and fanfare and a wave to the Savannah. Todd Gulick 6 September 2015
Ring Smoky quartz and silver mounted on textured cedar head
Pendant Smoky quartz and silver mounted on textured cedar head
Pendant Red coral and silver mounted on textured cedar head
Ring Smoky quartz and silver mounted on textured cedar head
Bracelet Silver and feathers mounted on textured cedar head
Ring Silver and raw crystal agate mounted on textured cedar head
Necklace Feather pendant with oxidized chain mounted on textured cedar head
Ring Silver with bone and feathers mounted on textured cedar head
Ring Red coral, wood and silver mounted on textured cedar head
Ring Silver, wood and feather mounted on textured cedar head
Ring Silver ring with lava stone mounted on textured cedar head
Cover: Pendant Silver and horn mounted on textured cedar head
Published by: Yasmin Hadeed and Y Art and Framing Gallery 26 Taylor Street, Woodbrook Trinidad and Tobago I Tel: (868) 628-4165 Photography by Sean Drakes I Design and Layout by Johnny Gonsalves I Printed by Office Authority Print Division Š 2015, All Rights Reserved.