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Visual Matters
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An interview about "Little Gestures" 2017
Where Is Here, curated by Jacqueline Francis and Kathy Zarur, evokes the real and conceptual space through which we travel. The exhibition presents the works of contemporary artists who are developing personal and engaged visual and musical systems to claim, make, and describe space. The imagery is both straightforward and poetic.
Very Ironic, especially now. A detail from my "Tropical Night" series (2005 - ongoing) represented Trinidad in a project for the Pan Am/Parapan Games. The image “Afro-Ophelia” makes a link between the Pre-Raphaelite image of Ophelia in my Nelson Reader, the book through which formal English was conveyed to me as a child, and the front page images of the local dailies which showed the dead body of a young woman ( Beverly Jones ) who was part of a political group, called NUFF, ( the National Union of Freedom Fighters) in the 70's. I did not attempt to capture her likeness. Images of her are hard to find. I used a graphic poster like representation feeling more like a Pam Grier movie poster of that time. I often feel that this moment, to which we have developed an astonishing blind spot, may explain something of our current social predicament. The image was also in the Trinidad Guardian, of all places, a few weeks ago and an image symbolizing her was representing Trinidad on Lake Ontario and, if that is not enough, the project was called "Watercolour." ( image courtesy the Textile Museum of Canada )
Monday, November 04, 2019
"Where Is Here" Museum of the African Diaspora.
An interview about "Little Gestures" 2017
Where Is Here, curated by Jacqueline Francis and Kathy Zarur, evokes the real and conceptual space through which we travel. The exhibition presents the works of contemporary artists who are developing personal and engaged visual and musical systems to claim, make, and describe space. The imagery is both straightforward and poetic.
New Level Head(s)
Rising Waters Confab
Rauschenberg Residency: April-May 2016
People(s) afloat or on the move.
New communities?
Social relations formed by rising water levels globally.
New social relations formed by common practices and predicaments.
In my past work I thought often about the difference between being displaced and being dispersed.
I come from the rest of the Hemisphere or planet. We have always been on the move between owned spaces or territories. What has been our response?
Transgressing or crossing borders.
I have always drawn these submerged heads. They refer to a condition - to a state of being - of suspension, on the move, between territories, be it cultures, nations and other social constructs.
About being and not being in “history”?
Maybe this (dis)respectful and investigative distance, or divestment in place, is old and simultaneously new – a way of living/being in perpetual uncertainty about owning or
having to own.
CAPTIVA / 2016
Rauschenberg Residency: April-May 2016
People(s) afloat or on the move.
New communities?
Social relations formed by rising water levels globally.
New social relations formed by common practices and predicaments.
In my past work I thought often about the difference between being displaced and being dispersed.
I come from the rest of the Hemisphere or planet. We have always been on the move between owned spaces or territories. What has been our response?
Transgressing or crossing borders.
I have always drawn these submerged heads. They refer to a condition - to a state of being - of suspension, on the move, between territories, be it cultures, nations and other social constructs.
About being and not being in “history”?
Maybe this (dis)respectful and investigative distance, or divestment in place, is old and simultaneously new – a way of living/being in perpetual uncertainty about owning or
having to own.
CAPTIVA / 2016
Installation version from RELATIONAL UNDERCURRENTS: CONTEMPORARY ART OF THE CARIBBEAN ARCHIPELAGO SEPT. 16, 2017
Sunday, April 14, 2019
Cannonball Residency, Miami, 2015
“What I look for a lot of time [in my work] is empathy,” Cozier said. “I’m just using a different vocabulary. One of the weirdest things about artists like myself is that people don’t see my work as Caribbean in the Caribbean.”
See more here
Saturday, August 29, 2015
Enredos / TEOR/ética
July 15 - September 26 / 2015
See information here
See review from Experimenta also translated on Repeating Islands
See information here
See review from Experimenta also translated on Repeating Islands
Friday, August 28, 2015
Entanglements / June 27- October 18 / 2015
Curated by Yesomi Umolu,
Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University.
"...Cozier presents two recent single-channel videos, Gas Men and Globe (both 2014), that explore the presence and impact of multinational oil companies in various international locations. Filmed on Lake Michigan—a site that in recent years has witnessed repeated crude oil spills at BP’s Whiting plant in Indiana—these works address the politics of the global oil economy. In each video, men in business suits draw fuel pump nozzles and hoses like pistols, swinging them in the air in a manner reminiscent of cowboy-style rope tricks or the whip cracking of carnival performances. These figures’ actions play out in the staccato rhythm of a crude stop-motion animation, their standoff recalling a Spaghetti Western set to a haunting soundtrack of sitar chords, live vocals, and sirens. In this take on what he calls “B-movie male heroic spectacle,” Cozier calls attention to the power dynamics of an economic paradigm that has grave effects on seemingly anonymous places, lives, and histories...".
See more here
Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University.
 |
| Installation shot of Gas Men & Globe courtesy the Eli and Edythe Broad Museum. |
"...Cozier presents two recent single-channel videos, Gas Men and Globe (both 2014), that explore the presence and impact of multinational oil companies in various international locations. Filmed on Lake Michigan—a site that in recent years has witnessed repeated crude oil spills at BP’s Whiting plant in Indiana—these works address the politics of the global oil economy. In each video, men in business suits draw fuel pump nozzles and hoses like pistols, swinging them in the air in a manner reminiscent of cowboy-style rope tricks or the whip cracking of carnival performances. These figures’ actions play out in the staccato rhythm of a crude stop-motion animation, their standoff recalling a Spaghetti Western set to a haunting soundtrack of sitar chords, live vocals, and sirens. In this take on what he calls “B-movie male heroic spectacle,” Cozier calls attention to the power dynamics of an economic paradigm that has grave effects on seemingly anonymous places, lives, and histories...".
See more here
 |
| Video still from Gas Station Gene |
Afro-Ophelia on Lake Ontario
Very Ironic, especially now. A detail from my "Tropical Night" series (2005 - ongoing) represented Trinidad in a project for the Pan Am/Parapan Games. The image “Afro-Ophelia” makes a link between the Pre-Raphaelite image of Ophelia in my Nelson Reader, the book through which formal English was conveyed to me as a child, and the front page images of the local dailies which showed the dead body of a young woman ( Beverly Jones ) who was part of a political group, called NUFF, ( the National Union of Freedom Fighters) in the 70's. I did not attempt to capture her likeness. Images of her are hard to find. I used a graphic poster like representation feeling more like a Pam Grier movie poster of that time. I often feel that this moment, to which we have developed an astonishing blind spot, may explain something of our current social predicament. The image was also in the Trinidad Guardian, of all places, a few weeks ago and an image symbolizing her was representing Trinidad on Lake Ontario and, if that is not enough, the project was called "Watercolour." ( image courtesy the Textile Museum of Canada )
Monday, April 06, 2015
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About Christopher Cozier
Christopher Cozier is an artist and writer living and working in Trinidad. A 2013 Prince Claus Award laureate, he has participated in a number of exhibitions focused upon contemporary art in the Caribbean and internationally. Since 1989 he has published a range of essays in a number of catalogues and journals.
The artist was a SITE Santa Fe - SITE lines Satellite Curatorial Advisor for 2014.
The artist was a SITE Santa Fe - SITE lines Satellite Curatorial Advisor for 2014.
Works by the artist can be seen at David Krut Projects NY and at Francoise Heitsch Galleries in Munich. The artist was recently awarded a 2015 Cannonball Residency.
Gas Men, a recent video, developed during a residency at The Kaplan Institute in 2014 was screened by Monique Meloche Gallery , and opens at the Eli and Edythe Broad Museum in June 2015.
Cozier was part of the editorial collective of Small Axe, A Caribbean Journal of Criticism (1998-2010). The artist has been an editorial adviser to BOMB magazine for their Americas issues (Winter, 2003, 2004 & 2005).
The artist is a Senior Research Fellow at the Academy of The University of Trinidad & Tobago (UTT) and was Artist-in-Residence at Dartmouth College during the Fall of 2007 .
A documentary produced by Canadian video artist and writer, Richard Fung entitled Uncomfortable: the Art of Christopher Cozier ( 2006).
He was a co-curator of the exhibition Paramaribo Span which opened in 2010 and its related blog and publication. He was also a co-curator of "Wrestling with the Image" which opened in 2011 and one of the administrators of Alice Yard.
Cozier was part of the editorial collective of Small Axe, A Caribbean Journal of Criticism (1998-2010). The artist has been an editorial adviser to BOMB magazine for their Americas issues (Winter, 2003, 2004 & 2005).
The artist is a Senior Research Fellow at the Academy of The University of Trinidad & Tobago (UTT) and was Artist-in-Residence at Dartmouth College during the Fall of 2007 .
A documentary produced by Canadian video artist and writer, Richard Fung entitled Uncomfortable: the Art of Christopher Cozier ( 2006).
He was a co-curator of the exhibition Paramaribo Span which opened in 2010 and its related blog and publication. He was also a co-curator of "Wrestling with the Image" which opened in 2011 and one of the administrators of Alice Yard.
Links
- from Repeating Islands
- TEOR/ética
- Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum
- SACI Blog
- Cannonball Residency 2015
- africanah interview
- on trendbeheer verslaat
- gas men at Miller Beach
- OZY e-Mag. interview
- Conversation at RCA 2014
- PCF Culture in Action Intro
- Prince Claus Award 2013
- Art in America
- artzpub
- Rockstone & Bootheel
- Global Caribbean
- MACO/ March 2010
- Small Axe
- BOMB magazine
- Interview/BOMB 82/Winter 2003
- CaribbeanBeat
- The Caribbean Review of Books
- Alice Yard
- Tropical Night
- Galvanize
- Caribbean Free Radio
- Irénée Shaw
- Mas-Sample
- popopstudios
- CCA7
- Paramaribo SPAN
- Town
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