In their joint effort to promote visual art and intelligent dialogue, Oliver Benoit and Asher Mains presented a panel at St George’s University (SGU) this past week.
The talk entitled “Creative Research in Academia” was hosted by the School of Arts and Sciences at Caribbean House.
Benoit shared his art research as going hand in hand with his research in sociology. He spoke about the philosophical underpinnings of sociology, then went on to tell how this informs his art practice. Recalling the work he has done with the bricks of the heritage buildings of the city of St George’s, he linked this to the identity of the Grenadian people.
Further, he shared his research for the current exhibition at the Grenada Pavilion of La Biennale di Venezia, the Shakespeare Mas. For this research, he joined a team of people in the Cypher Collective, all with different emphasis on how the ritual of the Mas is relatable to today. His point of focus was the whip, which he then researched, tracing the origins of its use in the plantation system, as it was employed to control the enslaved. He noted that sadly it is still used in Caribbean classrooms today to intimidate children into rote learning and obedience. In the paintings, the words of Julius Caesar were stenciled onto a large canvas, then obscured with colour and texture and large black strokes indicating the whip. Benoit is an abstractionist, yet given a starting point, these paintings can be deciphered.
Asher Mains also shared a brief history of his art projects for the past 12 years, which have led to his current work based on the writings of French/Martinique poet/philosopher Edouard Glissant. Glissant posits that as Caribbean people, we have a right to opacity — in other words, we don’t have to reveal everything we know or everything we are. Mains’ work for the Grenada Pavilion is an installation of items picked up from the beaches of Grenada and Carriacou. These thrown-away things speak in a powerful way as to their very presence. A fragment of a fishing net, a board from a boat, a dried-up crab shell — all instantly recognisable by any islander. These create the environment for every Shakespeare Mas ritual played at Carnival time in Carriacou.
Following the short presentations, a lively question-and-answer time ensued. Many of the faculty of the Arts and Sciences department present contributed their thoughts on how this research truly encompasses many of the disciplines of academia including philosophy, literature, and psychology. Students from the Medical school shared that their study of the human body in drawing informed their powers of observation as diagnosticians. It was generally agreed that this type of primary research, the questioning of the people who were intimately involved, led to a result far deeper than just reading articles or books about the ritual.
Art in research can speak to those very familiar with philosophers’ works, and it can speak to the everyday person. Benoit spoke about his experience in interviewing a student at the T A Marryshow Community College. The student from Carriacou shared that their discussions had caused him to think deeper about the words of Julius Caesar, and to understand that jealousy between the villages in Carriacou really had caused the Shakespeare Mas ritual to continue over many decades.
Dr Oliver Benoit is a sociologist and teaches at SGU in the School of Arts and Sciences. You can see his art at oliverbenoit.com. Asher Mains is a Doctoral Candidate at European Graduate School and teaches Art, Philosophy, and other classes in the school of Arts and Sciences at SGU. His work can be seen at ashermains.com.
The exhibition at the Grenada Pavilion in Venice will continue through 27 November 2022. You can see it online at grenadavenice.org. This has been supported by the Government of Grenada through the Ministry of Culture and the National Lotteries Authority, the Grenada Tourism Authority, StArt— an Italian events and publishing company, and many individuals.
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