We swore…that we would never leave the island… is the theme of artist Kvita Mongroo’s first solo exhibition of paper collage and mixed media artwork. The Trini-Canadian artist said her work is a product of her experiences and struggles living in two places. The exhibition opened at Soft Box Gallery in St Clair on October 1 and continues to the 15.
Mongroo began studying art at Naparima Girls’ High School, where she was exposed to many different Caribbean artists through gallery visits during CXC and A Levels, and was really inspired by what she saw.
[caption id="attachment_978793" align="alignnone" width="932"] Kvita Mongroo , right, speaks with an art patron at the opening of her first solo exhibition of paper collage and mixed media at Soft Box Gallery. Photo courtesy Christiff Findlay Photography[/caption]
“Even then I dreamed of becoming a Caribbean artist. It was something that really resonated with me, how they captured this island we live on. People like Jackie Hinkson, Lisa O’Connor, they were my heroes then. I wanted to participate in that as well, capturing how we live and what we see, the beauty that’s around us every day that sometimes we take for granted.”
The artist was born in San Fernando and lived there until her family migrated when she was four years old, returning when she was nine. She went to primary and secondary school in TT, and returned to Canada for university where she studied philosophy, public policy, and English Literature.
“I never lost interest in art, I kept it up as a passion and a hobby. My Caribbean roots were always an inspiration. Art was a way of reconnecting all the time. Even if I couldn’t be at home, or be in Trinidad or in the Caribbean, my work was a source of conjuring the memories that stayed with me and then expressing myself.”
She said the subjects she studied come into play in what she chooses to portray in her work and the titles of her pieces.
“The theme We swore…that we would never leave the island…” is an excerpt from Derek Walcott’s poem Another Life from Book II: Homage to Gregorias.
[caption id="attachment_978792" align="alignnone" width="852"] Ghosts by Kvita Mongroo. Photo courtesy Christiff Findlay Photography[/caption]
The words express the hold that TT or the Caribbean have on you, and when you leave, you swear you’ll never leave, because it’s your memories, it’s your childhood, and then you come back because there’s something that pulls you back, it plays on your memories. You come back, you may leave again but it’s like you never leave because so many things might trigger a memory in you.
“I remember when I was in Canada and after it would rain, there would be puddles of water on the ground and the sun reflecting in them would take me back to Mayaro beach. And that that would be what I would remember, even on a wet rainy day in November.
“When I was reading Derek Walcott’s work, it was incredible and it expressed for me that unnameable force that keeps the hearts of island people embedded in the beauty that we breathe in every d
