Power Shine Body Art exhibition in Cornwall shines light on natural beauty – The Kingston Whig-Standard

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Pitt Street’s Cailuan Art Gallery buzzed with excitement on Saturday evening, during the Power Shine Body Art exhibition — the gallery’s first exhibition of 2021.

The event was also a first in that it featured the work of a married couple —Yaffa Goawily did the painting whereas her husband Kaiser Moussa, a professional photographer, took the photos.

The two are new to Cornwall, having established themselves in the city last year just prior to the pandemic tightening its grip on the area. Despite having been here for a short time, the two are already quite involved in the local arts community.

Saturday’s exhibition featured much more than photographs however — starting at 5 p.m., Goawily also proceeded to undertake a live body painting of local model Cailan Davies.

“We have two live performances — tonight for the opening, we have Cailan who will model and be painted and then mid-month, we will have Jason Sauve be painted. It will give us both the perspective of male and female,” said Cailuan Gallery owner Tracy Lynn Davies. “It’s going to be really neat.”

The exhibition also happened to be a first for Goawily.

“It’s my first show in Cornwall,” she said. “I believe that art is a very powerful healing process. I’ve been doing art since I was a child — art isn’t fancy, but it’s important for everyone to do something artistic, whether it’s listening to music, watching a movie or even read a book.”

In all, Goawily worked with four different models in order to create the pieces for the exhibition. These were actually friends from Montreal.

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“When they were ready, we did the body painting session for them,” she said. “My intention, basically, was to work with people that aren’t models — they are normal women discovering their own happiness by adding colours to their bodies and sharing that happiness. There is no shame or judgment in how our body looks like.”

Painting a whole body usually takes Goawily about one and a half hours and it’s something that she’s been doing for quite some time — 15 years to be exact. Her interest in it began when she was attending college.

“They put us in the gallery and I kept painting for seven hours a banana and other natural things,” she said. “I liked doing it, but I started getting a little bit bored — that’s when I started painting myself. From there the idea grew.”

Every piece in the exhibit is for sale and anyone wanting to view it can do so between Thursdays and Saturdays, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. According to Davies however, local residents can request a private showing with their social bubble. All they have to do is contact the gallery.

So, how have things been at the gallery during the pandemic? Well, apparently a little slow. But that hasn’t stopped Davies from thinking outside of the box.

“We applied for the Digital Main Street grant, which helped us get online — we now have a beautiful website,” she said. “We’ve been able to do some business through there, selling art online and having a way for artists to make some money and to have something to, have a goal to work towards.”

Despite lower sales during the last year, Davies did say requests from residents wanting to get into art have for their part significantly increased. So much so, she ended up hosting private, online one-on-one classes.

“We’ve had a lot more request for classes and I think that people are finally starting to realize that they need to try new things and branch out,” she said. “I guess that the pandemic has given them time to think about what they want to do.”

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