Zinnia Cheewah, 51, prefers to use her voice for a cause.
So when the mural, graffiti, and tattoo artist, graphic designer, and art director was contacted by a member of the business community to paint a mural to encourage people to get vaccinated against covid19, she jumped at the chance.
“I am actually working for a discount price. The things that drive me is change. We need real change, global change. You can protest by writing your name on a ballot but, for me, that’s not enough.”
She said TT has over 300 new cases of covid19 a day, people are dying from the virus, including a friend of hers, yet people keep spreading misinformation about it. And, while she believes the restrictions are necessary, people are suffering emotionally, physically, and financially. So, she wanted to do something to encourage people to get vaccinated so lives can be saved and things can start returning to some kind of normalcy.
Cheewah said, as part of the private-sector awareness campaign, ttbeatcovid19.com, Amcham commissioned 15 murals, and several other businesses got on board. Amcham conceptualised the murals and she designed them.
She now has several completed murals as part of the Take the Jab Jab campaign on the walls of the TSL Group in Newtown, Powergen, the Queen’s Park Oval, and Mario’s Pizza on Tragarete Road.
Cheewah is also painting two murals in Sangre Grande and would like to do a few in Arima and south Trinidad, but she needs permission and support from companies.
“The international campaign is ‘Take the Jab,’ so the local campaign is ‘Take the Jab Jab,’ because of Carnival and Carnival is TT. I wanted to keep it basic and simple, concise and to the point. ‘Get vaccinated. Stop the spread.’”
She said the murals are for all companies and all people so, drawing on her 30 years of experience in advertising, she used primary colours and black and white. Even the height and font of the message were designed to make them eye-catching, and easy to read in passing.
Cheewah, who is from Belmont, is also eager to begin working on another project that is close to her heart.
She told Sunday Newsday she was moved by the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota in May 2020. She said in TT there is a separation of the people and people do not realise it is “systemic racism.”
“Heavy-handed police brutality exists in Trinidad too. It might not be on the same levels we are seeing in the States, the way it’s overtly racist, but we have classism here.”
Therefore, as indicated in a recent two part article in the Sunday Newsday, Cheewah planned to start working on a mural with two other artists, Ronny "Pternsky" Boyce and Kerwin Jackson, to commemorate the lives of Joel "Lion" Jacobs, 38, Noel Diamond, 46, and Israel Moses Clinton, 27. The three men were shot dead by police in Second Caledonia, Morvant on June 27 last year.
Her hope is to bring love and energy into the community.
[caption id="attachment_901650" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Zinnia Cheewah stands before a mural of a message encouragi
