Uma obra de arte detergente em Trindade e Tobago: Blue Soap de Christopher Cozier

Abstract

This article analyzes Christopher Cozier’s multichannel video installation of mixed media contemporary art entitled Blue Soap (1994). The article employs the leitmotif of the artwork, blue soap—a raw soap used in the Caribbean—to construct an aesthetic and socio-political critique of Trinidad and Tobago. Using a selection of visual material from the video installation and drawings of Blue Soap, the article considers reports from national newspapers on the art event, and integrates these reports with analysis of audience comments from its exhibition opening in 1994, in Port of Spain, the capital of the country. This data analysis is supplemented by in-depth ethnographic interviews I conducted with the artist and collaborators on the work, and includes a study of Cozier’s sketches in his art notebook at that time. This article dissects the scenes and symbolism in the artwork, problematizing the soap's metaphorical cleaning/cleansing action in society. It shows the colonial connections related to the use and symbolic values of the soap, which were inherited by Trinidadian society after independence, and it connects them with some of the current critical issues that society is dealing with.Following the structure of the video art, the contribution contextualizes these issues socio-historically, and develops a temporal excursus, linking the same topics to society today. The aim is for the reader to understand the local issues of the time, and allow her/him to relate these issues to other post-colonized societies of the Americas and the world. The article develops its contents in three parts: the first two explain the topics of the video installation and contextualize the issues socio-historically; the third part develops theoretical frameworks for the issues previously described.The first part relates to post-independence social and psychological issues that Trinbagonian citizens were experiencing and questioning. Here the artist is the main protagonist and reflexively explains issues of racial identity from personal experience. Moreover, this part of the paper discusses the broader topics of self-affirmation as an independent nation, but one that still depended upon the variable economic waves of oil and gas incomes. The attempted coup d’état that occurred right before the release of the artwork is also discussed in this part of the text.The second part treats concerns surrounding institutional arrangements and the postcolonial social expectations based on aesthetics, style and class articulated by the protagonists of the video installation. Each of the characters expresses some of the topics highlighted in the video, namely, the borders between institutional nationalized culture and its different existent subcultures, the complexity of gender stereotypes, postcolonial hierarchical structures of colonial colorism and social expectations, and issues of visibility and social representability.The third part of this article assembles postcolonial theoretical frameworks in accordance with the artwork itself, exposing the identity issues of post-colonized, contemporary citizens. It looks at questions of trust and conformity within established group structures, concluding with a discussion of the issue of migratory and diasporic displacement, which many countries like Trinidad and Tobago have faced in their history.