Maica Gugolati

Maica Gugolati (Italy, Trinidad and Tobago)

Cazabon Now, 2019

digital collage

9.25 x 12.5 inches

This work uses imagination as a way to question visuality connected to the act of living in extractive postcolonial spaces. Landscape etymologically means “to shape the land”; this project relates the unrepresented extractivescape of the Caribbean Island of Trinidad and Tobago with the fictional classic perpetuation of exotic tropical natural beauty’s landscapes related to what was conceived as a ‘New World.’ Today this dichotomy is still on. This photo collage: Cazabon Now, aims to question viewers about the reliability of what they see and to recognize how they are ‘shaped’ by the lands they live in. Cazabon is a painter reference — Michel-Jean Cazabon was Trinidad’s first internationally known artist, known for his pictorial representations of nature and country landscapes. This work provocatively makes a time bridge between colonial and postcolonial landscaping, questioning the modalities in which human beings are “shaped” and “do shape” their lives in relation to an unrepresented extractive landscape. This research-art project combines anthropology, art criticism, fieldwork investigation, photography, and digital photo collage.