Women of Carifesta

Without exception, each Carifesta celebration has opened and closed with great Carnival-style street processions and jump-ups. It is therefore only appropriate that a depiction of Carnival opens this exhibit on Carifesta.

As one of the few female visual artists who exhibited at Carifesta ’72, the Trinidadian painter Sybil Atteck (1911-1975) is one of the titular “Women of Carifesta” whose legacy we celebrate on this site. Her work has been widely exhibited and admired throughout the Caribbean. Though preceding the first Carifesta by a decade, Sybil Atteck’s vibrant painting, Spirit of Carnival I, can serve as an excellent representation of the spirit of Caribbean festivals. Spirit of Carnival was also included in the Trinidad and Tobago contribution to the São Paulo biennale of 1963, and has therefore already served as an ambassador of the artist’s home country.

As Keith Atteck notes, "The addition of I and II for the title of the painting was a choice of the Central Bank," who purchased the painting, "and was not the original title. This painting was first exhibited in the 1962 Independence Exhibition and the Annual November Exhibition of the Trinidad Art Society. Drawings of this painting were included in several newspapers and magazines at that time and captured the imagination of the new nation."

By choosing this painting for the website landing page, instead of the painting she exhibited at Carifesta (a more muted work entitled "Water Tower") we suggest a connection between Carifesta and one of its major inspirations and storied predecessors, the Trinidad Carnival. It resonates with events like Carifesta precisely because of its use of abstract and expressionist elements, not realist figuration. Its dramatic, frieze-like composition makes for an attention-grabbing cover image. The painting’s depiction of Carnival as both exuberance and struggle resonated with the heady days of Trinidad and Tobago’s recent independence and celebrated one of the new nation’s cultural traditions. In the same way, Carifesta filled its participants both with optimism and certain apprehensions. It attempted to reflect and create a new sense of regional unity. Could the region’s divisions be overcome in the crucible of pan-Caribbean festivity?

Learn more about Sybil Atteck here.

Details and Credits »