BERNADETTE INDIRA PERSAUD
Bernadette Indira Persaud( b. 1946, Berbice, Guyana) is widely recognized for paintings that confront ecological, social, and political concerns. Through her Rainforest series( 2009 – 2014), she treats the Guyanese rainforest— part of the greater Amazonian ecosystem— as a sacred space where cultural memory and natural cycles are bound in continuous transformation. Drawing on her Indo-Caribbean heritage, Persaud bridges Indigenous and Hindu cosmologies and metaphysics to explore the spiritual dimensions of the land, envisioning the rainforest as a divine, feminine force.
In Guyana, the Amazonian interior is often referred to as“ the bush”— a complicated term that evokes both reverence and danger. Persaud reflects these contradictions in Rainforest 6: ' the edge of seasons '( taken from the poetry of Lucille Clifton)( 2013), where lush greenery flourishes beneath a twilight sky rendered in deep violets and blues. A vivid red sun that can also be read as a blood moon anchors the composition, evoking apocalyptic scripture:“ the sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood.” Within this celestial body, a faint, haunting skeleton emerges in an invocation of Kali, the Hindu goddess of time, often depicted with skeletal features and associated with the destruction of illusion. The painting unfolds in the spirit of magical realism, where myth and landscape coexist. The rainforest becomes a cosmological space in which life and death, creation and decay, are eternally entangled.
Today Persaud’ s vision resonates with renewed urgency, as Guyana faces mounting environmental vandalism from rapid industrial expansion— particularly oil extraction and illegal gold mining— that have endangered biodiversity and the health of Indigenous communities.
( GRACE ANEIZA ALI)
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