The Art So­ci­ety of Trinidad and To­ba­go (ASTT) at 3–7 St Vin­cent Av­enue, Fed­er­a­tion Park, opened its 2026 In­de­pen­dence Ex­hi­bi­tion, ID, on Fri­day, Au­gust 21, bring­ing to­geth­er 38 works by 29 mem­bers in a cel­e­bra­tion of cre­ativ­i­ty, in­di­vid­u­al­i­ty and na­tion­al iden­ti­ty.

The ex­hi­bi­tion, which end­ed yes­ter­day, was held as Trinidad and To­ba­go marked its 64th an­niver­sary of In­de­pen­dence.

It ex­plored the theme of iden­ti­ty through a di­verse range of medi­ums, styles and artis­tic per­spec­tives.

The ti­tle ID is a play on “iden­ti­ty” and In­de­pen­dence Day, con­nect­ing the per­son­al iden­ti­ty of each artist with the col­lec­tive iden­ti­ty of the na­tion.

Pres­i­dent of the Art So­ci­ety, Pe­ter Shep­pard, said the ex­hi­bi­tion in­vit­ed artists to re­flect on how their ex­pe­ri­ences of Trinidad and To­ba­go in­flu­ence their cre­ative ex­pres­sion.

“As artists, our work is an im­por­tant ex­pres­sion of who we are. We want­ed our mem­bers to ex­plore their own iden­ti­ty and con­sid­er how their ex­pe­ri­ences of Trinidad and To­ba­go in­flu­ence what they cre­ate,” he said.

An ex­pe­ri­enced pan­el se­lect­ed the pieces af­ter a call to mem­bers to in­ter­pret the theme through their artis­tic prac­tice. The re­sult­ing ex­hi­bi­tion of­fers vis­i­tors var­ied per­spec­tives on Trinidad and To­ba­go’s cul­ture, her­itage and cre­ative iden­ti­ty.

Found­ed in 1943, the Art So­ci­ety of Trinidad and To­ba­go is the coun­try’s old­est vi­su­al arts in­sti­tu­tion, ded­i­cat­ed to pro­mot­ing lo­cal artists and sup­port­ing the de­vel­op­ment of the vi­su­al arts.