Kvita Mongroo’s debut exhibit, 2022’s We swore…that we would never leave the island, announced the arrival of an artist concerned with building visions and tearing them apart. The Trinidadian-Canadian collage artist’s follow-up, 2024’s The Traces that Ending Worlds Leave Behind, amplified the stakes, freighting her delicate constructions with a dual sense of the dystopian and the utopian. Her next show will, in a similar vein, explore illusions and dreams. Mongroo studied art at Naparima Girls’ High School in Trinidad. Though university life saw her pursue degrees in literature, philosophy, and public policy, her art practice — inspired in its early days by the likes of Jackie Hinkson and Tonia St Cyr — remained a constant. Colours, patterns and textures jostle in her work, which makes good use of the sense of play and fragility possible within the paper collage medium (on her website she describes it as marked by “innocence and imprecision”) in order to serve as a kind of portrait, and an ongoing one, of the Caribbean space. We spoke with the artist recently via email.
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MOKO: These stunning collages are from your last show, the ominously titled The Traces that Ending Worlds Leave Behind; but they have become even more prescient and urgent in the months since. Is tapping into the zeitgeist important to you?
KVITA MONGROO: Thank you! Yes, I think it was important for me to say through my work that as an artist my eyes are open; I recognise that humanity seems to be on a particular trajectory and it does not bode well for the preservation of our natural environment or our robust survival as living, thinking beings. I needed my work to speak to a vision of the future. I wanted it to prompt imaginations. What is “Caribbean futurism”? How can we think about this? I was thinking about our landscapes and living arrangements under extreme environmental conditions. I was thinking about our bodies and the biological changes that we might be forced to endure and adapt to. I was particularly moved by this line from Arundhati Roy’s The End of Imagination, “What shall we do then, those of us who are still alive? Burned and blind and bald and ill, carrying the cancerous carcasses of our children in our arms, where shall we go? What shall we eat? What shall we drink? What shall we breathe?” When you think about natural disasters, wars and nuclear war and its consequences, what does the Caribbean look like then? What survives of “us”? How do we define ourselves?
MOKO: What is the process like for each exhibition? How do you come to your themes?
KM: I take usually a year or two to build a new body of work. I read a lot and then the theme comes to me wherever my imagination has been captured. I think about what I want to convey and why. Is it important? Is there a message that someone will be moved by? Does it move me? Is it beautiful? Like any artist however, I’m not immune to my life experiences. Emotions and moods play a role in the creative process. So there is a combination of relevance, beauty, meaning and personal emotions before I come to a definite theme. If it is consuming me, then I know it’s the right theme to work with.
MOKO: There is a relaxed yet deliberate intricacy in each piece. Can you tell us how a single collage might come together?
KM: I try to first paint a dynamic background if I’m not using paper for the entire thing. Then I build layers of collage paper. If I can’t find the paper I want, I might paint it myself. I tear instead of cut out all of the paper shapes because I like the imprecise and sometimes jagged effect. Often the background influences the colours I may not have necessarily planned to use with the paper elements. So a lot of the work is spontaneous. I very rarely sketch anything beforehand. Then, I choose the particular textures, patterns or images from the various papers that I may want to layer, contrast and build new objects with. Storytelling is important and sometimes there are stories within the tiniest bits of paper. I often leave little pieces of text or particular objects to become part of the whole picture. It’s fun for me to have hidden meanings. I’ve also started introducing some cloth and plastic elements and this is proving to be quite exciting. Then a lot of glue is involved in quite a tedious process, as well as some finishing protective layers of various preservation sprays.
MOKO: Are there any artistic references you would like to share?
KM: There are so many! Music is probably my biggest influence and my companion when I work. I’ve loved opera most of my life and listen to it because I feel that visceral connection to the expression of the human condition, the agony and joy of being alive. It will definitely play a role in the upcoming features of my next show because the work is going to be opulent in terms of colour and texture. Particular composers I need right now are Ravel, Borodin, Rimsky-Korsakov, Dvorak and Wagner.
But for my last show, The Traces that Ending Worlds Leave Behind, I found myself drawn to Indian classical music. It led me to do some limited reading on Hinduism, Indian philosophy and Lord Shiva. There were linkages there that I had not even been conscious of. Particularly relevant was the whole idea of destruction and creation, the endless cycle of the universe, the dance of the cosmos so to speak. So naturally, the music put me in a particular space and so many beautiful things happened. I also attempted to understand Indian ragas, again, first drawn in by the pure beauty of sound. I discovered their connection to moods, emotions and colours, and I found myself in another realm; if you will, a new world. So I know this will also impact my next body of work. Milan Kundera wrote something that stuck with me years ago, that “the individual composes his life according to the laws of beauty even in times of greatest distress.” This is something most artists can relate to.
The visual artists I can draw inspiration from are rather varied. I like Wangechi Mutu for the rawness of her subject matter and the intensity of her collages; Odilon Redon for the mystery, his surreal imagination and brilliant colours in pastels; Van Gogh, my childhood favourite, for the depth of emotion you can feel emanating from his work from almost every brushstroke. People tend not to be familiar with Rabindranath Tagore as a visual artist, but his paintings haunt me. I am also deeply moved and captivated by the work of Isaiah Boodhoo. The colour palette, the gloriously mystical abstractions, the energy and pulse, to me, he is a master artist, if one can speak of such things.
MOKO: Can you tell us what life is like in-between shows; more about what you are working on next?
KM: Life in between shows is very calm and contemplative. I work full time in another field, I try to travel, read and study, I play the piano; music is very important. I am not the kind of artist who works on art constantly. I have artist friends like this; they always have to be working. I always have to be thinking. I’ve often questioned if this makes me not a “real” artist. But I can’t say. Closer to the date of a show everything becomes hectic and stressful. But I am always ready on time and then the peaceful feelings descend. When the run is over, I feel like I have lost parts of myself. I don’t mean to make the whole experience sound bleak, but for months after, I will create nothing. That energy has gone.
The 2026 show will probably include collages and sculptures like my last two shows did. I can tell you that the theme is absolutely related to ideas I am currently intrigued by. It is not particularly new or ground-breaking, but I want to explore some ideas based around illusions and dreams. Obviously, the ingenuity will come with my execution of the whole concept. I hope I’m able to capture these ideas in a fresh way. There will be elements of surrealism again; it is the dream world after all. But I want to know: journeys and emotions, what do they mean in a dream? If I’m happy in a dream, does the happiness count? Is it real happiness? If I feel loved in a dream, is it love? What is the nature of its validity? And how “real” is reality anyway? Science will look at it one way, art in another way.
MOKO: Might you say a little about the textual elements in your work, given the poetic references that are often present?
My academic background is varied: English literature, philosophy, and public policy. So the textual elements and poetic references are an important part of who I am. I really value that quest for knowledge, for the essence or “truth” of a matter, and ideas that I come across, especially notions of beauty, despair, connection, coincidence and flourishing, they influence my thought processes and compel me to create in a way that explores the meanings and consistencies here. I think that if I were a better writer, I would write. But I am not, so I create with colour and shape. I only get the opportunity to express myself with words when I’m creating titles. So I try to take advantage of this. None of my titles are arbitrary.
As for poetic references, I don’t think I need to explain the depth of feeling that poetry conveys. I use it constantly to lend its concise nature to terribly complicated thoughts and feelings I might be struggling with, things that we all struggle with. And sometimes I try to imbue my work with the essence that a good poem has; that intangible quality that takes us beyond ourselves and into realms of stillness, where beauty is frozen and ours alone.
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