Art Everywhere

Three incredibly fast and incredibly full days later, I have seen A LOT of art in and around Paramaribo. As we, the Carifesta participants and attendees, are warned on an hourly basis, there have been many many program changes, cancellations, reschedulings, etc but logistical breakdowns aside I've found lots to see in lots of places many of which involve rather expensive taxi rides but I'm not having to drive on roads with what are for me unpronounceable Dutch names - asking for directions is really comic. So as the SRDs fly out of my wallet (that would be the Surinamese dollar, pronounced ess-air-day) I just keep reminding myself that I'm not paying for a rental car nor am I having to obsess about getting lost, finding parking spaces, or paying for inevitable bumps and scratches.

So I imagine its best to start with the rather epic taxi ride on Sunday - one of the most important Carifesta sites that I wanted to visit is the Traditional Folk Village, which I was told was 'just over the river' in the district of Commewijne. I worked with the ever helpful Ramsay MacDonald, the manager here at the Felisa (actually pronounced felisha) Apartments to book the taxi and both the price tag and the manager let me know that in reality the site - the Nieuw Amsterdam Fort and Open Museum - was far far away. But what the heck, that's what I came here for so over the river and through the fields I went and all things considered it wasn't a bad price for the 45 minute drive. That first taxi driver called another taxi driver friend who lives out that way and we made an arrangement for the return trip and into the fort I went - it was a huge and very beautiful site with lots of historical buildings and info in addition to the Amerindian and Maroon folk villages, the performance stage, the kids bounce house, women with monkeys in diapers on their shoulders, calypso singers, dancers in beautiful saris, etc etc etc so of course I had a great time.

The Powder Storage House

Of course I went first to the Amerindian Village because I wanted to meet Alfons Sjinga's mother and see her pottery demonstration which was on the schedule for 11:00-1:00. There were three traditional-type houses; I don't know if they were built just for Carifesta or whether they are here anyway but Correlly Aloema (the potter) was definitely there and she did demonstrate the making of pottery in the way she had been trained by her mother and I learned lots more stuff but I'll keep it to myself this time since I'm sure you've heard enough about that already.

There were also things to buy - pots, seed jewelry, traditional clothing - and cooking demonstrations going on from which you could sample the results. Whole fish were being roasted on sticks,  there was cassava bread and a fermented (ie alcoholic) cassava drink called 'cashiri' and then there was this little bucket half full of some kind of shredded red fibers and I was listening to the Dutch discussions that indicated that it - whatever it was - tasted like cheese ('kaas') and would you like to try it ?

(if you have eaten recently please scroll down past the next picture)

My answer was most definitely NO, no, don't care if it tastes like cheese when it looks like a giant squishy caterpillar with teeth. Gaaack. On to the next folk village.

The Maroons (African slaves who escaped the plantations) of Suriname have been extensively documented by American anthropologists Richard and Sally Price, both in terms of their social/historical village organization, and in terms if their astonishingly complex and beautiful artwork.  As a result, I had expected there to be some sort of museum of Maroon culture in Paramaribo but this is definitely not the case. There are tour options as well as some events scheduled in the villages during Carifesta, but since the Maroon communities are understandably quite far from the city these were not opportunities I could take advantage of on this trip. However, at the folk village you can begin to see the beauty of the painted architectural imagery; you can easily find the women's traditional applique clothing with similar patterning being sold at craft booths in various Carifesta locations, and you can buy wood and calabash carvings at souvenir stores. There were demonstrations going on here that emphasized the very laborious processes used for the production of starch staples - periodically these women would stop their rhythmic pounding of the cassava flour to take a breath and make pointed exclamations that even in Dutch clearly meant hot and tiring.

On my way back through the fort buildings I stopped off for some more bakabana (fried banana with spicy peanut sauce) and noticed a sign for a small exhibition of Surinamese artists on the second floor of the largely unrestored slave prison building and found some amazing photography by Nicolaas Porter, as well as very nice paintings by Albert Roessingh all of which were hauntingly beautiful against the rough, resonant walls of this historical setting.

The taxi driver's taxi driver friend came right away when I called, and arrived in a blessedly frigid air conditioned car (it was HOT) but didn't speak a word of English so it was a pretty quiet drive back to Paramaribo where I had him drop me at the arts site. The core location for Visual Arts at Carifesta is the Grand Cultural Marketplace, held at the huge Chamber of Commerce facility called the 'KKF' (ka-ka-eff - once I got the pronunciation right the taxi directions got much easier). On display outside are individual country-based booths stuffed full of jewelry, clothing, prints, photographs, souvenir-type stuff, and a little bit of pottery (always difficult to move around...). Haiti is hosting the next Carifesta in 2015, and the general opinion and mine as well is that the Haitian booth was a triumph - beautiful, innovative clothing, jewelry, and accessories with a fantastic display strategy using brown paper and string. Next to the craft booths is a big stage with a constantly rotating schedule of different Caribbean music styles, plus an enormous cavernous building for the Culinary Arts, a first for Carifesta.  Lots of great stuff to sample - I had some lovely fried Indonesian tofu with vegetables, and a delicious curry and dumpling meal from the Guyana food stand.

The Craft Marketplace

Steel pan band from Trinidad 

The very popular food pavilion, with individual country dining options

The big Visual Art exhibition was held indoors gallery-style, along with the table setups for the Literary Arts section. The Cuban paintings were particularly interesting to me, no real surprise as they have a great art school and a very sophisticated visual art environment that is demonstrated every two years with the famous Havana Biennale contemporary art extravaganza. There is a range of predictable visual styles and formats in Caribbean art that I have probably seen too much of, so the unusual combinations of images in these paintings by Carlos Rene Aguilera were fascinating - sugar cane and surfboards ? brown skinned women with polar bears ? Definitely new and intriguing approaches to the ongoing visual quest for Caribbean identity.

The best sculpture was coming from the Suriname section; again, transport becomes a real issue when dealing with three-dimensional work so there wasn't much of it here. I really enjoyed the life-size, Carnival-inflected figures of Dhiradj Ramsamoedj as well as some of the large paintings from Surinamese artists.

Sri Irodokromo (Suriname)

George Struikelblok (Suriname)

Bernadette Persaud from the University of Guyana had a very strong body of work on display; I met her several years ago in Trinidad and she's a fascinating artist. In the past she has done a lot of social/political paintings, and the image of the Hindu puja flag is often present. This exhibition was dominated by gorgeous, lush landscapes in combination with the flags, some figurative elements, and curiously beautiful temporary pedestal/ground drawings made with brightly colored organic material that created a fascinating ritual foundation for the work. 

The St. Lucia delegation did a great job despite limited resources and shipping delays - the literary section was very strong; for the visual arts section younger artists were highlighted in addition to established painters; and the craft booth had a wide range of products by many Lucian artists including jewelry, ceramics, masks, prints, photography, handpainted fabrics and more.

St. Lucia Literary Arts

St. Lucia Visual Arts

Relief wood carving by Jalim Eudovic

Mixed media landscape triptych by Delthia Natram

St. Lucia booth for the craft marketplace

June Frederick and Delthia Natram staffing the booth

ceramics by McCrasey Joseph - as promised McCrasey !

The Carifesta schedule really wound up at night, with lots of choices for dance, music, and theater into the wee hours if you could figure out where you were going and if it was still happening when you got there. Sunday night I saw the National Dance Company of Suriname at one location (ballet/modern accompanied by a live jazz band, really good), and then the National Dance Company of Belize at another (Afro-Caribbean cultural dances accompanied by African drumming and song) , plus an excellent short play by kids for kids about how to identify and end sexual abuse called "My Body Is Precious'.

The Belize National Dance Company

Drummers from Belize

Monday I decided to spend the day in town shopping and looking - I needed a new hat because I left mine in that icy taxi from Commewjine - so I set out on foot and just kept wandering. I found a suitable hat at a Chinese shop, and then headed over to the section of town along the waterfront with the public markets and while the big market was pretty empty (a taxi driver told me that they open at 3:00am so that by the time I got there around 1:00pm they were getting ready to close) but there was also a small craft market next door. And amazingly, I met yet another of the Galibi potters from Stowel, the village I visited on Saturday. Marlene Aloema is the sister of the woman who was demonstrating at the fort and she had two very beautiful bottle forms one of which I absolutely had to buy and through an interpreter I was able to learn even more about her family. She was a really nice lady and it was just wonderful - I am so fortunate.

Marlene Aloema

Interesting find - Alfons Sjinga's pots in the Hyatt Hotel lobby in Paramaribo

After that I went back to the Readytex gallery and bought one of the 19th century antique glass bottles I have been lusting after plus some Maroon wood carvings and with little money left I went in search of an ATM but could not find one that takes Visa - turns out that the bank I have been using near my hotel, the Royal Bank of Canada, is one of the few or maybe the only bank that accepts anything other than Mastercard. So I made the long hike back to my hotel, dropped off all my wonderful stuff that I now have to figure out how to get back to the US, stopped by the bank and the bakery, and hopped a taxi back into town for a Jamaican dance performance. Ooops - cancelled, but the young woman from Carifesta who was scheduled to work the event gave me a lift back into the city center because even she had not been told it was cancelled. No problem, earlier in my wanderings today I was at the Nola Hatterman Art School talking with their faculty and they told me about a reception for the annual Surinam National Art Show so I went there instead and had a great time - some really good work, some predictable stuff, even a few ceramic artists, and I bought a really interesting small piece incorporating photographs on paper and canvas in a narrow painted wooden window frame by a Indian-Surinamese artist - see the final posting after I get home; I've already packed it but will document later. A few images from the show:

Really beautiful landscapes by Binda Anand

Landscape painting by graphic artist Henna Brunings, who designed the excellent logo for Carifesta

Wonderfully kitschy mixed media painting with applied beads and jewels by Carol Chen Poun Joe

Interesting painting/print, likely self portrait, younger artist ? (my apologies - forgot to write this one down)

After the show I treated myself to a totally amazing meal back at the first restaurant I went to; they had a special Carifesta sampler menu with three local seafood appetizers (shrimp ceviche, smoked fish with pickled beets, and flashfired red snapper with cassava fries and garlic sauce - gorgeous) and three local desserts (strawberry jelly stuffed donut, a kind of bread pudding, and a tiny fruit and custard pastry). Totally fabulous.

Yesterday I had lots of logistics to deal with - packing, check on flight, arrange for airport pickup at 3:30am (!!!!!!) on Thursday morning, book a ticket for a sunset/dolphin tour, figure out just what money I still needed, figure out what I can get rid of to try and make the luggage weight limit, etc etc etc. After a bit of negotiation with a taxi driver (I know what it costs now to get around but I understand that Carifesta is a real opportunity for the drivers so they'll boost the prices if they can get away with it) I headed back up to the KKF to spend a few more hours with Lucian friends and all that great art, craft, music, and food. The joint was really jumpin' - all the booths were finally filled up, more stock was out, lots of choices in the food building, reggae music onstage, great time. AND - wonder of wonders, there was an Indian potter who had set up since the last time I was here and he was demonstrating on his crazy homemade potter's wheel throwing one tiny little vessel after another (of course I bought some) and letting kids have a go on the wheel. I was pretty good - I think I waited a full five minutes or so before I shoved them out of the way so I could try it myself and had a hilarious, almost comprehensible conversation with the potter (he in Dutch, me in English) about the obvious fact that I was also a potter. It was a hoot - the wheel seemed to only have one speed and that was very very fast so I nearly embarrassed myself but did manage to make a little pot kinda like his. What a wonderful treat. As always the women in the family were doing the selling, and they also had lots of deyas, the little clay oil lamps (bought some of those too) used for the Hindu Diwali festivals both in India itself and in the Indian communities in the Caribbean - in November I'll be headed to the one in Trinidad with Jan and Ellen so stay tuned to the blog !

 I decided to finish up my Carifesta experience with a huge performance event at Flamboyant Park - the famous Tropicana Club floor show from Cuba and boy was it an eyeful. I was sitting pretty far back so all I have is the fuzzy picture below but you have just got to go to YouTube or something because these Cuban show girls were outstanding - impossibly long legs, fantastic costumes with really tall hats and REALLY tiny thong bikinis, and quite simply the most perfectly toned and utterly mobile backsides in the world. And the music was really good too.

Today I'm kicking back some, but will head out soon to Sana Budaya, the Indonesian cultural center north of here, and then continue up the coast to meet up at the Leonsburg Pier for my sunset boat tour on the Surinam River that boasts a 90-something percent chance of seeing dolphins. Then its back to Felisa Apartments to finish up the packing and maybe go get some of the local Chinese food I've heard so much about, then a bit of sleep before my 3:30am departure. I'll post from home over the weekend with some final thoughts and pics of all the great stuff I've bought; what a month it has been. And its been both fun and good practice to write the blog - my thanks to all who have tuned in. I'll take a break for a bit after this, but will continue to post periodically this year as I work through the manuscript, and continue my travels in Jamaica, Trinidad, Antigua, Nevis, and maybe Tortola. Just plug in your email address on the top right of the blog site and it will let you know when I'm back on. 

Dancin' in the Streets

Ooof - obviously I'm still working on the 'post every day while I am in Suriname' but you'd probably get bored of me anyway (yeah, its all your fault). ANYWAY, it's been a very interesting couple of days watching Carifesta get itself off the ground; this is a huge festival taking place in many, many venues both in/around Paramaribo and in districts quite far from the city with artists and performers coming in from 30 countries around the world.
On Friday I walked into what I'll call downtown Paramaribo (the historic district; geographically this is a big city in part because there are few tall buildings so it spreads out across a very wide area) along a different route and headed back to Fort Zeelandia to check out the museum. It was closing shortly but the very nice guard told me to go ahead in and take a look without paying and in wandering around I bumped into a wonderful gallery director from Miami (Rosie Gorden-Wallace from the Diaspora Vibe Cultural Arts Incubator) who was setting up an exhibition in collaboration with the small national art school that is housed on the grounds of the fort. We chatted and exchanged contact info and then she asked the dreaded question - 'do you have a ticket for the opening ceremonies ?" which of course I did not and she said that they had announced the need for tickets that morning but by the time she had checked they were already gone. Hmmm. Well, we shall see about that. So I headed towards the Carifesta Office to learn more but on the street ran slap into Kennedy 'Boots' Samuel who is the artistic director for the St. Lucia delegation and while he didn't know anything about the tickets either we found a restaurant where we could get a terrific vegetarian lunch (ginger fried rice and three different kinds of cooked green vegetables plus the always-included condiments of sweet pickles and screaming hot peppers). It was fascinating to hear some behind-the-scenes stories of administering a monster event like this one, and on his advice after lunch I continued my quest for a ticket by hiking to a hotel I saw on my walk this morning that housed the media center where I talked to a really really nice lady who at that moment could neither get me a press badge nor a ticket but said that if I just go down to the event site and wait I should be able to get in. Down there I went, followed a few more empty ticket leads, talked to several security guards who all said that you had to have a ticket to get in, reconnoitered the site some more, and ended up with a small crowd of people at a sort of side entrance. This is where the St. Anthony moment comes in - have I spoken already about my mother's absolute faith in St. Anthony for solving problems and finding things ? Well, St. Anthony was about my only hope at that point and I am forever grateful that once again he came through. You see, there were some rather vocal ladies at this particular gate who were quite vexed that they could not go in so they importuned the security guy in fairly forceful terms and before you know it my small crowd was headed into the stadium with me in their midst trying to look inconspicuous and we all found seats just as the announcer announced that the gates would be open soon.

The setting in Independence Square directly in front of the Presidential Palace was fabulously impressive, and over the next hour and a half the stadium filled and the delegations from various countries filed in and with remarkably few delays the opening ceremonies slowly but surely got rolling in an atmosphere of flat-out Caribbean-style celebration, speakers booming well-known dance music and most people bouncing around and waving Carifesta flags. Great atmosphere, great energy, beautiful people, gorgeous place.

The program for the evening - quite a long one, with the initial wait I was there for more than five hours - was an interesting combination of performances, speeches, and absolutely spectacular digital projections on the facade of the palace starting rather oddly with about 45 minutes of military and police bands at times accompanied even more oddly by dancing women in traditional dress. The various country delegations from Antigua to Venezuela (including India, China, and Indonesia, diaspora countries of origin for Suriname) were introduced and their flags presented, and there were quite good speeches by the Minister of Education and Community Development, the Secretary General of Caricom (the regional organization for economic integration), and the President of Suriname, all of which emphasized the (potential) transformative power of the arts to 'unite and excite' the Caribbean and the world. There was an extended performance by 342 Surinamese children of all ages, very colorful; a mindboggling display of kung fu acrobatics by the Shaolin Monks from China; and an elaborate full-length production for the final hour that included theater, dance, song, and a cast of hundreds following a central narrative exploring a very diverse range of contemporary issues - tradition and change, environmental impacts, sustainable tourism, and the leadership potential for the arts. It was interesting, if a bit hard to follow at times. But I do have to say that the digital projection and laser light show was so cool that it may have stolen the show.

 And when it was all over and Carifesta officially launched and the streets flooded with a bajillion people there was a perfectly extraordinary fireworks display that went on so long that I finally had to start my walk back to the hotel with the lights booming and blasting behind me. Wow.

Got back to the hotel and a very welcome shower around 11:30pm, but bounced right back up yesterday morning because - big surprise - I had been able to find a tour guide to take me to see potters. There were a few predictable delays which gave me time to go and get a SIM card for my phone (absolutely essential to have a phone here so you can call for taxis) and visit the one big art gallery in town (and in the country) but I eventually hooked up with Jurgen John and his wonderful lady friend Candy who had borrowed her sister's car and decided to come along for the trip since she had never been out where we were going. Jurgen hadn't had his breakfast yet so once we got completely out of town we stopped at a roadside restaurant that caters to tour groups and I got to taste the very delicious Surinamese fast food called 'bakabana' - deep fried sweet plantains with a slighty peppery peanut sauce, absolutely gorgeous.

The area where we were headed is home to the huge bauxite mines - bauxite is the ore from which aluminum is derived - and associated with the bauxite is a considerable layer of clay; I had heard about this previously from Dennis Bell in Barbados. Now the reason I found Jurgen and booked this trip is because of those pots I saw in the lobby of my hotel and subsequently in many other locations, thick unglazed vessels and garden ware that had clearly been hand built and traditionally fired - i.e. with wood in the open. I was told initially that these pots were made by the Trio tribe, but once I met Alfons and Melissa Sjinga I found out that they are in fact Galibi (Carib) and had moved to that area decades before. Alfons' mother is quite famous, and of course she was not there because she is demonstrating and selling her pots at Carifesta, at the Traditional Folk Village site where I am headed this morning.

Happily, Alfons drive up while we were there, and both he and his wife Melissa gave us a brief demonstration and answered my many questions about process and family history. The family village is only about 20 people, the workshop is definitely set up for tourist visits, and it was absolutely fascinating. They use this unique method of wedging into the rather awful clay (not very plastic, lots of rocks and sand and roots) large amounts of crushed charcoal from the bark of a very specific tree and for those of you who know about ceramics it works kind of like paper clay - they can build very large pots that dry incredibly quickly and fire without cracking. Fascinating.

 And for me and my methods-based pottery research I was even more fascinated to see that just like every other Amerindian potter I have seen they coil build the pots in single circuits - add one complete coil, blend in, add the next. This is fundamentally different from the West African methods used in St. Lucia and elsewhere in the Caribbean in which soft coils are continuously added and blended until the form is finished. Very cool (at least to me).

 The gender status of Alfons is also really interesting - historically, Galibi potters are all women, as are most traditional potters around the world, at least those who work with coilbuilding and open firing. Alfons grew up in a pottery-making household, and when his sister was not interested he took it up himself and has made a point of marketing to hotels and tourists. He also makes figurative sculpture, unusual in this vessel-based tradition, and entirely unique to his skill set. Once complete and dry, the pots are burnished with stones, fired with wood in a two-stage process that preheats the clay before running the temperature up quickly to about 900 degrees F, and then finally treated with an organic varnish made from a red tree bark. What Alfons is particularly known for are the very large decorative and garden pots, like the one below which has been painted black after firing.
Note on terminology: 'Carib' is the common name this tribe is generally known by; it dates back to the first contacts with Spanish explorer-conquerors, and is the basis for the name of the region and the sea. However, it is a word that the Spanish bastardized from the original, and is connected to their perceptions of the local populations of the Caribbean as cannibals. Hence, the correct terms of Galibi or Kalinago are now generally used to name what have been called the 'Carib' Indians.

After coming back to Paramaribo I spent the rest of the day and evening checking out the setup at the Grand Cultural marketplace, the Carifesta venue for visual art, crafts, and food (culinary arts). As it was  all in the process of being set up and thus understandably a bit discombobulated I shall reserve my comments for the next installment. Today I'm headed over to the Traditional Folk Village across the river where I hope to meet Alfons' charismatic mother, then back to the Grand Cultural Marketplace, and then hopefully to the dance performances this evening. The real challenge for me at Carifesta (and for any other foreign visitor) is getting around from venue to venue. Wish me luck.