Paria's Pearl

Paria's Pearl

I don’t know where my family was from. I couldn’t locate myself in China, even when I visited Shanghai with a friend in 2018. Paria’s Pearl was/is my search for the body’s of water routes; from a small village on the banks of the Pearl River, merging with the Atlantic, through the Dragon's Mouth spilling into the Gulf of Paria. These bodies of water hold memories that flood the streets of Port of Spain and perhaps that’s why the Dragon couldn’t dance or look at its own reflection. When I looked down at the cloudy waters, I saw my shadowy reflection. When the water was clear, there was only my shadow cast onto the seabed which nested a pearlescent glint. A promise of wealth that the dragon dove into the ocean for and when it came up for air — it was a shop on Charlotte Street.
Paria’s Pearl is a fabulation of an alienated Chinese identity and it transforms through make-up, fashion, music, dance and performance into being, via Dragon mas. Witness the creation of my Trini-Chinese identity.

Year: 2024

Runtime: 6:31

Language: English

Country: Trinidad and Tobago

Premiere: Grenada

Suelyn Choo

Director

  • Kerron Lemmessy

    Director

  • Suelyn Choo

    Writer

  • Suelyn Choo

    Producer

  • Kerron Lemmessey

    Director of Photography

Director Biography - Suelyn Choo, Kerron Lemmessy

Suelyn Choo is an emerging, multifaceted Trinidadian artist and organizer. After receiving a scholarship in Art and Design from the Government of her country, she completed a BSc in Biochemistry with a minor in Women's Studies from the University of Delaware in 2017. After returning to Trinidad, she helped facilitate a collaborative mural project that foregrounded the fight against gender-based violence. Balancing a career at the Ministry of Health with compelling creative projects, she co-founded Acute An9le (@acutean9le) in 2018, which saw her directing and styling photoshoots for sharp new talent and veteran designers alike, such as IDLEWOODbespoke and Meiling Inc. Through Acute An9le, she explored the intersection of her Chinese and Indian heritages through the ornamentation of the body, which sparked an interest in presentation and perception of the self in private and public spaces. She seeks to answer these questions through work which includes self-taught painting, photography, makeup, fashion, and dance. In 2020, she showcased figure drawings in a group show at Alice Yard and collaborated with producer and DJ Blasé Vanguard on a performance, Red Envelope, that explored music, movement and fashion. In 2021, she exhibited paintings in a group show Relative and collaborated on a performance piece instigated by noted artist Chris Cozier, that was shown at the IDB Healing a Broken World virtual summit. She showcased her performance piece, Paria’s Pearl, which explores her relationship with her Chinese family’s migration and assimilation. It was performed and screened at documenta fifteen, facilitated by Alice Yard, in tandem at Granderson Lab, Trinidad and Kassel, Germany in July 2022.