Dr Kwynn Johnson is a Trinidadian artist and a Haitian Studies Scholar. At this year’s NGC Bocas Lit Fest, she is premiering a 30-ft drawing titled Place as Palimpsest. She has been working on this drawing for the past 3 years. It will also be featured in a series of forthcoming shows in Trinidad, Haiti and Florida; it will be her 8th Solo Exhibition. Since 2002, she has exhibited in several group shows both locally and internationally, including a number of Haitian Studies Association conferences, the Alliance Française in Haiti, and at the Tate in London. She has also been a selected artist for the past 3 consecutive editions of the Ghetto Biennale in Port-au-Prince. Johnson’s visual arts scholarship in the field of Haitian Studies has been published in journals such as the Caribbean Quarterly (2016), Tout Moun – Caribbean Journal of Cultural Studies (2013 & 2014), and the UWI Seismic Research Centre (2011). She was awarded the 2014/2015 UWI-NGC Most Outstanding Researcher in the Humanities for her Doctoral Thesis (High Commendation). With the kind permission of the late Sir Derek Walcott, representations of the 42 scenes which make up Acts I and II of the play The Haitian Earth (1984), form part of this drawing. In 2004, Walcott staged scenes from this play during a UWI conference marking the bicentenary of Haiti’s Independence. Kwynn Johnson and Carol Williams created the set-design for this production. She is also a 2009 recipient of the Cacique Award for Most Outstanding Set Design. Johnson curates private heritage collections, and is currently a part-time lecturer at The University of the West Indies, while working as an artist in both Trinidad and Haiti.
Photo by Gerard Gaskin 2010