Enjoy sweet mangoes from my island Trinidad & Tobago! Piece titled: Mango Rose Size: 61 x 91 cm Artist: Tricia Trotman-Maraj Medium: Acrylic on canvas "Mango rose, Mango vert..... I want ah penny to buy Mango rose, Mango vert, Gimme ah penny to buy..." That was the song we sang over and over again under the shade of the tamarind tree in the school yard. It was too hot in the classroom for any work to be done, and our teacher decided that the best way to pass the evening would be to practice our song for the up-coming San-Fernando Arts Festival. It was stiff competition between the best Primary Schools in South Trinidad and we wanted to win, so despite parched throats and the blisteri
Piece titled, ' Beauty for Ashes' by Tricia Trotman Maraj Size 120 cm × 100 cm Medium: Acrylic on Canvas This piece represents what is called ' burbon cane' ( sugarcane) in Trinidad and Tobago. Its juicy, and soft, and sweet! But in my island, and like all other islands in the Caribbean, sugarcane was the main reason for the existence of the African slave trade. Many lives were brutally taken for hundreds of years and their toil feed the economies of colonial masters. The blood, sweat and tears of generations of African slaves, and later on Indian indentured labourers, nourished the soil of cane-fields and enriched a few in distant lands. From the ashes of ancestors arose generations of
