When most of us think of totems, we visualise birds or animals carved from thick wooden poles and imagine their spiritual significance for the First People, particularly the "Caribs" of Trinidad and the Warao of Venezuela.
But artist Greer Jones-Woodham is finding ways for totems to cross cultural boundaries, and from September 14-18 they will be exhibited at Soft Box Gallery, Alcazar Street, St Clair.
She got the idea of experimenting with totems five years ago while making necklaces out of chunky, hand-made ceramic beads.
“Every time you string a bead, it tells you what to put next. You see the necessary repetition and how to break the repetition. The necklaces dictate a structure, and the totems I envisioned became an enlargement of that process and structure,” Jones-Woodham told WMN.
But no art, she claims, comes out of a vacuum or an isolated event. It is a culmination of experiences.
“The same time I was making jewellery, I was doing a lot of contemplating in public spaces like the Botanic Gardens and the Queen's Park Savannah.”
Just homing in on a tree created a concept of flow. Leaves rustling in the breeze conjured up images of birds, and then birds magically appeared on branches.
“The power of the objects speaks to you. Observations are not static. They move and change,” said Jones-Woodham. “Nature is always a work in progress – just like art. Stories enter objects. It’s like you’re playing chess and every piece has power.”
She suddenly found herself creating clay birds without a tree or nest. They waited for a place to rest in her art. In those early days, as her ideas for creating totems took shape, she knew everything she stood for as an artist would converge on a whole new interpretation of totems.
[caption id="attachment_1034614" align="alignnone" width="1024"] - Angelo Marcelle[/caption]
“I saw my theatre experience as a set designer, my sewing, embroidering, painting and textile work all taking shape as objects not yet connected, and it all brought me peace,” she said.
Then the pieces in isolation began suggesting relationships. The totems were coming together.
“You have a structure – a base that forms the foundation of a story you’re going to tell. I think of the pieces going up from the bottom. When the First People did totems, they believed in the spirituality of the objects. If they were doing animals, objects began shape-shifting.
Her totems tell the story of TT, its beauty and violence. The first totem, In Memoriam, captures the tragic story of battered women.
“It looks at how women have lost their lives. The guns in the totem take on lives of their own. The guns, the crime and objects float about on the totem. A chair turned upside down cascades down a pillar. A bed is thrown into the scene. The guns morph into breadfruit leaves – my way of stopping the guns from firing. My totems use mobiles, so objects move.”
The art is meant for viewers to meditate on the images and draw their own conclusions.
“As the objects in the mobile spin, you see how your own perso
