VETERAN artist Makemba Kunle promises his upcoming exhibition of drawings will excite and stun audiences.
The exhibit, entitled The Gathering Storm, will run from August 9-21 at Arnim’s Gallery, 27 Tragarete Road, Port of Spain.
Kunle said the Storm is a “suite” of drawings, ink on paper, "of a civilisation in the crisis of defeat," together with a selection of miniatures done between 2014 and 2021. The exhibition marks Kunle’s first showing in Port of Spain in just over six years, with the last being his retrospective The Unfolding of an Artist: Art, Aesthetics and Revolution at the National Museum and Art Gallery in 2014.
Kunle, artist-in-residence at Studio 66 Art Support Community in Barataria, told Newsday The Gathering Storm is based on work he has been doing over the years and during covid19 lockdown. It is all new work that has not been exhibited before.
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It is his third exhibition of black and white drawings in pen and ink, which is one of his favourite media.
"(It is a) representation of things around me. I draw all the time – people, vibes, things I feel. (I am) Presenting the world as authentically as I see it."
He said The Gathering Storm includes drawings he had done to present for a Carnival band two years ago, but the production team was unable to produce it.
The medium
So what draws him to pen and ink?
"Drawings are my notes, notes that I use in order to do larger pieces which would be the paintings."
He said he has hundreds of drawings over the years, but for the drawings that will be exhibited, he tried to finish them as complete works in themselves and "not merely notes."
"I am showing some of my most successful ones."
Kunle said the covid19 lockdown gave him more time to work, as he is usually busy with his work for the Studio 66 community-based organisation and Caribbean Yard Campus, a network of Caribbean yards (community, grassroots, and traditional knowledge institutions) engaged in the practice, research and application of Caribbean culture in education, enterprise and development. But the studio was closed and the work continued mostly online.
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"I had much more time to do the drawings," some of which he works on at the same time.
"Many of them would be failures. These would not be shown. Those that don't qualify for the wastebasket I still use as notes."
He estimate he keeps about in one in five of his drawings.
He said artist LeRoy Clarke, who died on July 27, inspired him to do more drawings.
"His drawings were one the first things I admired that he did. From since he did (his collection) Douens and even before.
"We were very close. I am mourning his death right now. I am mourning his passing and still trying to come to terms with it. We have lost a g
