French Embassy to host Tina Spiro's 'Homage to Jamaica'

A special art exhibition, 'Homage to Jamaica (Then and Now)' will be held at The French Embassy

presenting the works of Jamaican/American artist Tina Spiro, whose love affair with Jamaica has spanned the past 44 years. The

exhibition will include some of Spiro's better known paintings on loan from Jamaican collectors, as well as works from her new series of large scale portraits.

The exhibition is open to the public on Thursday, October 29, and Friday, October 30 from noon to

4 p.m. at 13 Hillcrest Avenue, Kingston 6. The exhibition will be in support of Food For The Poor, with independent curator Gilou Bauer as

programme director of the exhibition.

The exhibition is under the patronage of His Excellency Ambassador Jean-Michel Despax and Madame Line Despax. Ambassador Despax has a distinguished academic background and diplomatic career. He graduated from the French National School of Administration. He has focused on major humanitarian issues including disarmament, urban planning, climate change, and decentralised cooperation. Despax has served in various important diplomatic positions for the French prime minister and minister of education; and in the United Nations, Cameroon, Geneva, Milan, and Jamaica.

His wife, Line, is from Martinique and is a fine artist in ceramics and pastels.

Tina Spiro is best known in Jamaica for her magical realist paintings of shells, flora, and the magnificent Jamaican landscape, which the artist has been portraying for decades even as the environment is being altered by climate change and carelessness. Her recent portrait series focus on the beauty and soul of the Jamaican and Caribbean people, their dignity and endurance as universal

archetypes.

Spiro has recently returned from Beijing, at the invitation of the China Artists' Association where she is exhibiting at the sixth Beijing Biennale at the National Museum of China where she has represented Jamaica previously in 2010 and 2012.

n For further information please contact Mrs Gilou Bauer at 320-6590 or at gilou.b@cwjamaica.com.