Collection: Shanice Smith

Shanice Smith is a Trinbagonian interdisciplinary artist and an arts activist, Smith has a keen interest in Carnival and cultural studies from Trinidad and Tobago, frequently researching and visiting various archives, museums, temples, shrines, and any spaces where Trinbagonian cultural heritage is taught, reproduced and practiced.

Smith has a Bachelor’s in Fine Arts and certificate qualifications in Social Work and Psychology from the University of the West Indies, St Augustine (UWI). She is also the co-founder of Cousoumeh Collective which focuses on using participatory research methods via the act of cooking as a tool for interpersonal engagement. Within the Caribbean and its diaspora, food holds a lot of meaning as a way of showing care and building community.

ARTIST STATEMENT

From Gombey in Bermuda to Jonkonnu in Jamaica; from Shortknee in Grenada to the
Bookman in Trinidad; from the Rara bands in Haiti to the Pay Bannann of St. Lucia; one of
the things that connects us deeply here in the Caribbean is our masquerade traditions - a
revolutionary act of joy in spaces born from trauma. Caribbean masquerade traditions are
very much a form of ancestral veneration, and what better way to encompass the Soul of the Caribbean than through mask making.

This piece is part of a larger ongoing body of works emerging from the intersection of
memory and mas(querade), rooted in the vibrant street theatres that is Carnival and deeply inspired by our sacred forms of varying African masquerade like those of the Yoruba and Congolese peoples. These works seek to honour a lineage that spans a continent and centuries. For example in Yoruba cosmology, the Egungun masquerade is a powerful embodiment of ancestral spirits — a sacred performance where the ancestral entities rejoin the festivities as revered guides. Further to that, the addition of mirrors act as a window and a form of communication between both the living and the ancestral realm. 

Carnival has long served as a space of resistance and expression, where the mask becomes both concealment and revelation for revellers. My masks often draw inspiration from the kinetic energy of the Egungun masquerade and reinterpret it through the lens of Carnival’s theatricality and defiant joy. These are not replicas, but reinterpretations — an artistic call and response between diasporic memory and contemporary Caribbean identity.