Always take me home by debut artist Kvita Mongroo.

Artist Kvi­ta Mon­groo will be launch­ing her first col­lec­tion of pa­per col­lage and mixed me­dia art­work with Soft Box Gallery in St Clair from Oc­to­ber 1–15, 2022.

The show’s ti­tle “We swore…that we would nev­er leave the is­land” is an ex­cerpt from Derek Wal­cott’s po­em An­oth­er Life.

Mon­groo who is a Trinida­di­an/Cana­di­an artist shares, “For the ti­tle of my first so­lo ex­hi­bi­tion I was search­ing for the right words to en­com­pass the pow­er­ful ef­fect that a life in the West In­dies can have on you. Af­ter some re­search I came across a line in Wal­cott’s An­oth­er Life and was im­me­di­ate­ly struck by mem­o­ries of my grief at leav­ing Trinidad for the sec­ond time as an adult.

“In his prophet­ic words, ‘We swore…that we would nev­er leave the is­land…’ was the promise I made to my­self at that time: nev­er to for­get those enor­mous man­go tree roots in the pri­ma­ry school yard where we sat and spoke with the naïve cer­tain­ty that life could on­ly get more beau­ti­ful.”

Mon­groo cre­ates her mas­ter­ful col­lages through a care­ful process of tear­ing pa­per (no scis­sors) and lay­er­ing it to cre­ate se­mi ab­strac­tions of ob­jects and scenes on can­vas. She some­times in­cor­po­rates acrylic and spray paint for back­ground ef­fects.

Artist Kvita Mongroo at work in her garden.

While study­ing art at Na­pari­ma Girls’ High School, she took her ear­li­est in­spi­ra­tion from Jack­ie Hink­son and Lisa O’Con­nor, ad­mir­ing the ef­fort­less ap­pear­ance of light in their work. Like them, her cur­rent work pri­mar­i­ly fo­cus­es on still life and scenery in the West In­dies. She be­lieves that the light­ness of the en­riched but re­laxed at­mos­phere of the Caribbean is best cap­tured through the in­no­cence and im­pre­ci­sion of the pa­per col­lage medi­um. This metic­u­lous tech­nique al­lows for a de­cep­tive­ly sim­ple play of colour, pat­tern and tex­ture, re­sult­ing in the joy­ful mo­sa­ic that is is­land life. More than a decade of work has cul­mi­nat­ed in this, her first col­lec­tion.

Women in pa­per col­lage is some­thing Mon­groo would like to cel­e­brate as col­lage is an art form of­ten over­looked, stem­ming from artists as ear­ly as Mary De­laney (1700 – 1788) who as a British artist ar­guably pi­o­neered in­tri­cate pa­per col­lage though it was not ac­cept­ed as a se­ri­ous art form un­til Ma­tisse dab­bled in it al­most 100 years lat­er. The in­ter­na­tion­al­ly cel­e­brat­ed Kenyan artist Wangechi Mu­tu beg her ca­reer pri­mar­i­ly with pa­per col­lage cut from mag­a­zines fo­cused on the fe­male form.

There are oth­er fe­male artists clos­er to home like Mar­guerite Wyke (1908 – 1995) who in­clud­ed as­pects of pa­per col­lage in her mixed me­dia work, and To­nia St Cyr who works ex­ten­sive­ly with pa­per.

“I re­al­ly stand on the shoul­ders of these women who saw the frag­ile beau­ty and ver­sa­til­i­ty of pa­per as a medi­um. My work is al­ways evolv­ing and there is so much more I want to com­mu­ni­cate. I am es­pe­cial­ly con­cerned with is­sues of en­vi­ron­men­tal degra­da­tion and would hate for my work to be­come a mora­to­ri­um for what used to be. I hope that peo­ple leave the show with re­newed de­vo­tion to pro­tect­ing our col­lec­tive West In­di­an her­itage, whether we are talk­ing about the nat­ur­al land­scape, ar­chi­tec­ture or var­i­ous cel­e­bra­tions.

This ex­hi­bi­tion seeks to cap­ture the in­tan­gi­ble essence those of us lucky enough to be born in the is­land light know all about. To tru­ly ab­sorb the mag­ic of your ex­is­tence on a beau­ti­ful is­land is the chal­lenge I am pre­sent­ing,” she said.

Open­ing night re­cep­tion: Sat­ur­day Oc­to­ber 1, 6 pm-8.30 pm. The ex­hi­bi­tion runs from Oc­to­ber 1 to Oc­to­ber 15.

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Opposition leader Juan Guaido holds his daughter Miranda Eugenia after giving a news conference to explain the income and expenses of his self-proclaimed, parallel government in Caracas, Venezuela, Friday, Sept. 16, 2022. The U.S. and other nations recognized Guaido as Venezuela’s interim president when they withdrew recognition of President Nicolas Maduro after accusing him of rigging his 2018 re-election as president. (AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos)

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Kees is all smiles on the Shaw Park stage.

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