To visual artist Zak Ové, Carnival is a fascinating example of multiculturalism and mas is a very important artistic medium that has not been taken seriously enough.
He believes mas needs to be acknowledged as an artform as it speaks to millions of people globally.
“To me, it’s really important to understand how masquerade can work as a tool of emancipation, how transfigurement through costume really helps one to excel and understand who one really is in a deeper sense. There’s no end to the lessons, philosophies and ideologies, artistically, I’ve taken from Carnival and I’ve tried to put back into my work.”
His latest piece, Moko Jumbie 2021, has done just that.
Commissioned by Art Gallery Ontario, the sculpture is 25 feet high. The human figure is about seven feet tall with enlarged hands and feet and a golden-coloured breastplate with the face of a young male masquerader. It is cast in fibreglass with graphite-coloured spray paint, with wings eight feet high, made of aluminium sheets and coated with two-toned paint.
The stilts are steel scaffold poles made to look like bamboo, and the figure’s shoes are size 17 Nike Air Jordans with the toes cut off to look like “washikongs” that are too small for the owner, as Ové remembered seeing as a child in TT.
[caption id="attachment_930348" align="alignnone" width="825"] Zak Ové's Moko Jumbie (2021) is a mix of steel scaffold poles, aluminium sheets and Nike Air Jordans. -[/caption]
“I was interested in the multiplicity of the character as spirit as well as in flesh, and how one can composite that within the design of the work.
“It’s a fusion of New World materials that can then be used to speak about old-world values in a traditional masquerade. When you infuse into any old-world tradition, whether is masquerade or African statue or mask-making, with New World materials, it reopens a contemporary dialogue into what the pieces are, how they have been made, and who it speaks to in that moment.”
Ové told Sunday Newsday he had previously made two moko jumbies which are now part of the permanent collection at the Sainsbury African Galleries of the British Museum. The work was commissioned to speak about the relationship between Africa and the Caribbean, and he is excited that those “deities” get to be at home and be a part of their original communities.
He chose the moko jumbie as a representation of the Caribbean because it is a powerful part of mas across the Caribbean as well as in the UK, US, and Canada.
[caption id="attachment_930346" align="alignnone" width="768"] Zak Ové has documented the tradition of ole mas in TT. -[/caption]
“I think the story of the moko jumbie wading across the sea from West Africa has always been relevant to the story of mas and to the story of Trinidad. So for me, it was a fitting piece to speak about the Caribbean’s relationship, in this case, to Canada.”
He said Julie Crooks, head of the department of Arts of Global Africa and the Diaspora at the Art Gallery of Ontario, asked for a moko jumbie after seeing the two
