Artist Christopher Pinheiro dies

Textile artist, actor, carnivalist, multi-media artist and writer Christopher Pinheiro has died, leaving the creative and cultural community in mourning yet again.
Reports are the cultural researcher was found dead in his apartment in Toronto recently, with news reaching TT on Saturday. It is said police discovered his decomposing body.
A profile written by the TT Performing Arts Network on March 24, 2017, said Pinheiro was a Trinidad-born "theatrician, carnvalist," multi-media artist, face and fabric painter, writer, curator and cultural researcher who trained with the Trinidad Theatre Workshop under the late Derek Walcott and the Jamaica School of Drama.
It said Pinheiro was a founding member of the Banyan Television Workshop, where he performed in several episodic TV dramas, and the Callaloo Company. It said he has worked with mas-man Peter Minshall and the Toronto Caribana of Shadowland Theatre Inc.
Minshall, in a quote posted by actress Rhoma Spencer, said, upon hearing of Pinheiro’s passing, “'The loss of a brilliant, unique, most gifted brother. My Goodness. There he goes, gliding along the glorious corridors of the Palace of Eternity, trailing along behind him the most fabulous floaty dhoti they have ever seen. Heaven will never be the same again.”
Pinheiro was a past president of the National Drama Association of TT and a recipient of a Commonwealth Foundation Fellowship in Textile Design.
Dominic Kalipersad, in a tribute on his Facebook page, said in Canada, Pinheiro was the founding artistic director of the Swizzle Stick Theatre in Toronto and formed a troupe of stilt performers to showcase their artform outside of the Carnival arena.
The Performing Arts Network said Pinheiro was a studio artist with b current, a small not-for-profit performance arts company in Toronto, where he developed a module titled “Metaphoria”, which draws on his experience to “explashiate the jollification of the nation, through the fine art of "festivation, in the post-colonial diaspora.”
Pinheiro was with this project from 2010 to 2013, according to his LinkedIn profile. He was a founding curator/presenter at the Toronto Island Film Festival beginning in 2009 and curator-programmer at Caribbean Tales Film Festival from 2014.
Pinheiro is remembered with fondness and love by those who knew him, with many crediting him with helping them develop artistically.(Source:  Newsday, June 30, 2025)

---