"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

Installation version from RELATIONAL UNDERCURRENTS: CONTEMPORARY ART OF THE CARIBBEAN ARCHIPELAGO SEPT. 16, 2017 

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

Enredos / TEOR/ética

July 15 - September 26 / 2015

See information here
See review from Experimenta also translated on Repeating Islands

Entanglements / June 27- October 18 / 2015

Curated by Yesomi Umolu, 
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 )

Francoise Heitsch / Munich / Mar 19 - Apr 30.

Videos gas men, Globe and related drawings at Francoise Heitsch, Munich until April 30, 2015.

Gas Men / Globe

Preview August 8 - August 10, 2014 - Miller Beach, Indiana

Derived from a recent series of drawings called The Arrest, and experimental collaborations, while in residence at North Western University, this video, tentatively titled Gas Men or Globe, (Globe being a popular cinema in Port of Spain), Christopher Cozier’s latest video installation investigates the ongoing environmental and sociopolitical challenges presented by oil economies. Read more here
Exhibition Partners: Monique Meloche Gallery, Chicago; Northwestern University’s Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities, co-sponsored by the Department of Art History, the Department of Communication Studies, the Center for Global Culture and Communication, and the Latin American & Caribbean Studies Program at Northwestern University, Evanston; Miller Beach Arts and Creative District. Special thanks to Evan Boris, Tom Burke, Ann E. Rose.

Works from 4 projects, 2010 - 2013

February 10-24 / 2014 / Y Art Gallery.
Including drawings from "the arrest"

See review here

Prince Claus Award ceremony at Alice Yard

Tuesday the 18th of March 2014
CHRISTOPHER COZIER: ONE NIGHT COLLABORATIONS Version 2 from Trinidad Home Studio Ltd on Vimeo. SEE PRESS here

the arrest, hands up, hand out...

Making of The Arrest- hands up, hand out.
Put your hand in the air and jump and jump / Dig it up and down / watch the plates shake / silicone bit head snake / Pump to the right and pump to the left / Throw the coin / five gourde toss / Departing birds / Hiding to bite, chew and swallow / Bag men eating, gas men laughing / Converse and ketch ass stepping / Laocoon and crapaud dance / watching the coin drop / Terrazzo and camouflage balls / Looking like a red dot but it’s not. - See more at: http://arcthemagazine.com/arc/2013/11/the-arrest-hands-up-hand-out-opening-reception-at-the-betsy-south-beach-hotel/#sthash.bkutizbw.dpuf

 Put your hand in the air and jump and jump / Dig it up and down / watch the plates shake / silicone bit head snake / Pump to the right and pump to the left / Throw the coin / five gourde toss / Departing birds / Hiding to bite, chew and swallow / Bag men eating, gas men laughing / Converse and ketch ass stepping / Laocoon and crapaud dance / watching the coin drop / Terrazzo and camouflage balls / Looking like a red dot but it’s not… 

The Arrest- hands up, hand out.
Put your hand in the air and jump and jump / Dig it up and down / watch the plates shake / silicone bit head snake / Pump to the right and pump to the left / Throw the coin / five gourde toss / Departing birds / Hiding to bite, chew and swallow / Bag men eating, gas men laughing / Converse and ketch ass stepping / Laocoon and crapaud dance / watching the coin drop / Terrazzo and camouflage balls / Looking like a red dot but it’s not. - See more at: http://arcthemagazine.com/arc/2013/11/the-arrest-hands-up-hand-out-opening-reception-at-the-betsy-south-beach-hotel/#sthash.Wj01Wni7.dpuf

Art Basel at The Betsy, 2013, in partnership with David Krut Projects, presents Christopher Cozier: "The Arrest: hands up, hand out"  a commissioned work in the Light Boxes of the B Bar.
This exhibit will be on view starting December 5, 2013 and will remain in place through March 30, 2014. 

Culture in Action with Naiza Khan & Christopher Cozier - Prince Claus Awards Week

Culture in Action with Naiza Khan, Christopher Cozier - Prince Claus Awards Week from De Balie on Vimeo.
READ MORE HERE

Being an Island (Inseldasein)

June 8th / July 27th / 2013 / daadgalerie / Berlin

Artist talk with Annika Eriksson, Christopher Cozier & Sarnath Banerjee.

Allora & Calzadilla, Álvaro Barrios, Sarnath Banerjee, Chang Chaotang, Christopher Cozier, Alvin Curran & Willem de Ridder, Trisha Donnelly, Annika Eriksson, Allan Kaprow, Christodoulos Panayiotou, Beatriz Santiago Muñoz, Stuart Sherman, Fiona Tan, Ben Vautier, Ryszard Wasko, Stephen Willats

Curated by: Kasha Bittner & Catalina Lozano

in DEVELOPMENT

CHRISTOPHER COZIER
On view: January 25 – March 16, 2013
DAVID KRUT PROJECTS
526 West 26th Street #816 New York, NY 10001

Click on the above image to go to website
To view the video click on image. To participate in the project visit site.

Two listings can be found here & here

SSV4KY

Sound System Version 4 in Kentucky 2012

Land of Tomorrow and the University of Kentucky Department of Art, in coordination with the Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft, are pleased to present Sound System Version 4, a sound collaboration between Christopher Cozier, Daniel Haun, Robin Foster, and Martin Raymond, with sound sequences by Ebony G.Patterson, Sheena Rose, Jomo Slusher, Sheldon Holder, Chantal Esdelle, Christian Campbell and Yvette Grey.
Experience SSV4KY in front of the University of Kentucky Fine Arts Building, Wednesday, April 11, 2012 from 7:00-9:00pm and in front of the Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft, Louisville, KY on Friday, April 13, 2012 from 7:00-9:00pm. Sound System is a collaborative experiment - a ten year investigation of accumulated sound.

Little Gestures - Into the Mix at KMAC

Installaction in action at KMAC, Feb 2012

installation detail from the Substation, Johannesburg Oct.2011

Collaboration between Marlon Darbeau and Christopher Cozier

 "Little Gestures" installation [recent Substation version] as well as Alice Yard design collaboration with Marlon Darbeau from the  Global Africa Project  adapted for - Into the Mix - at KMAC. More soon.
         

Substation Card 1 / Johannesburg

 
Since I was given this archaic object, I have been wondering about how education sometimes gives us the language to articulate  and even the countenance to accept the random conditions created by those who simply have the money to do what they want? I think of the outrage being expressed by young people occupying various financial districts around the world. It is a device to brush crumbs from a table. I thought it would be interesting to use the lino cut and Century Schoolbook type with creole - like grammar to make the unfamiliar object and the language fit.
The Substation Residency Dislocating the Studio is a series of residencies featuring local and international  cultural practitioners, structured as a challenge to the space  of the studio / gallery. Wits School of Arts, Wits 2013 Strategy, Wits Vision 2022, CISA and the Africa Centre - see further images here

FURTHER INFO. AVAILABLE ON THE EDITION FROM DAVID KRUT PROJECTS, NY AND JOHANNESBURG, HERE

"development box" and other moments

"MADE IN CHINA" stamps have been so much a part of our lives growing up in Caribbean. In the past it was pencils and plastic pencil-sharpeners, yellow twelve-inch-rulers etc. Modest items with all the associations of developing countries and low level consumption. Today, in the same locations, for people with bigger budgets, it is now monolithic structures and narratives of progress.

I bought this little stamp in a mall in Port of Spain. I began to see these little stamps more and more over the years. Apparently they are quite commonly used for labeling, on arrival, in small shops? Why are they being labeled here in Trinidad? What would the value of labeling my work this way in narratives of development and progress? So far I have begun to label drawings of pedestals for politicians to stand upon. Within the narrative of "Development" this object can allow them to feel taller and more important or they could use it to hang themselves.
A friend, Cecile, offered the following comment on my blog:
"I've heard of "suitcase traders" using these stamps when importing goods that aren't labelled with a country of manufacture. Such a label is necessary to bring these goods here "legally". So, traders take these stamps with them to wherever they go to get their goods and if there happen to be any items which are untagged, they place a little "Made in China" stamp on to avoid any trouble with Customs."

"Little Gestures" from the "Tropical Night" series.

This was my first drawing of the bench (peera ) which I called "little gestures" in 2006. Through the dialogues instigated by architect Sean Leonard at Alice Yard, this simple everyday object, enlisted into my symbolic vocabulary, became an object for design investigation by designer Marlon Darbeau. 
See further thoughts here.

Tropical Night in Martinique

Click on image to read more. Click here for the "Tropical Night" site.
See Video  by Marco Lora  Reid.

NOW SHOWING

Limited edition silk screen ( 100/100 ) done at Axelle Fine Arts, NY. commissioned by the Trinidad +Tobago Film Festival 2010, ( 27 x 20 inches ). The edition was launched on Friday July 16th at the National Museum.

Still from “The Life Movie” by Nicholas Laughlin 

Download discussion by Richard Rawlins in Draconian Switch #13

FROM MY NOTE BOOK  ( MAY - JUNE 2010 )

1. "Stains on paper;" is an idea that has been with me throughout my career. It's the title of an older work from the mid 90s. As with many of my images, the idea that my thoughts, visually, feel like a smearing or a staining of a pristine surface or field of art making ( I am thinking historically/internationally as a mere "native" who does not know better.) This is also implied locally as I do not come from the “Culture-producing-caste/cast” in the narrative of nation. You can look at it from within the confines of ethnic narratives or from class and family name etc. - the local bullshit that I faced when I was younger and now starting out as an artist in the mid-late 70's.  (The “who-are-you-to-feel-you-could do – x” stuff. ) So, there is, in my work, a dialogue about beauty and order deferred in sociological / existential ways. I was thinking about that anxiety which people like Naipaul discuss in their early lives and careers.

The stain - that grey grimy feeling - is the feeling of walking the streets of the city or of those kind of primary schools or institutional spaces like courts, government buildings, hospitals - any traditional waiting room around Port of Spain, still. But, it could also be Baltimore in the 80's or in those particular places in cities like Caracas or Johannesburg - those places where you find the darker people. Those places that people who inherit an idea of power think that it’s okay or natural for the rest of us to occupy?

 2. The "12.30 show"  from Walcott and the Vybz Kartel Clarks song meet or collide within my visual vocabulary therefore bringing together the formal and the vernacular. Again, it is about the spaces I navigated growing up here and remain curious about when I travel. Also this is derived from the collaborations I have done with David Rudder and also Sheldon Holder of the band 12. There exists a visual interpretation of the "Mad Man's Rant," by Rudder, which the artist and myself discussed in great detail over time. This print is a follow on in some way.

Much of the writing in my images are random but sometimes related thoughts that come to me while drawing.  So next to the bread on wheels I wrote my own thoughts and also something derived from  a line from a song ( Salt ) by 3 Canal where they ask - where you going with all that dough boy  - or was it millions…tens of millions or something like that. That line and tone of voice in their performance matches the line..where you get them new Clarks dey daddy….

3. The cut - tree ( cut-nature ) is, of course, the one outside the Forensic Center in Federation Park. I have been looking at it for some years now - and especially so - since the rise in daily murders in our city. I find it interesting that the tree was cut down, the trunk burnt out, yet it's sprouting again. To me this says something about history - about persistence and hope. But, it also says something about how the tree in the sun, in a “tropical” sense, can have different meanings based how one encounters it.  In this image I am more interested in the topical than the tropical.

Often, I am driving past this location. The people standing around it may have lost a son, a father, a brother or relative, for example. While waiting, they are hearing gunfire from the police shooting range over the wall. It’s the background of our ongoing and often denied violent history. The mysterious cracking sound in the back of Chekhov's play, The Cherry Orchard, comes to mind.. the something that makes people build higher walls or more burglar bars or stay home at night….but now its playing out for a different class and group in another place. It impacts upon the flavor of the promise of mobility and liberation.




4. The bare feet and Clarks shoes could be dancing feet stepping to an urban beat. Bare feet may mean impoverishment in one narrative or folk-ish rural fortitude from old national and socialist forms of representation and the shoes - a kind of grassroots stylish-ness or bling. Bunji mentioned the Citizens' Conservation Core and his commitment to Clarks as a sign of rooted-ness some years ago in his personal narrative - in an early hit, about people wanting him for fetes all over the country.

I wore Clarks in my youth and my kids now do so also. It’s funny how these conservative Brit shoes have been co-opted into Caribbean macho narratives.

The feet could also be the feet under those goofy old fashion Carnival costumes or the feet of shot youth sticking out from under a cloth at a crime scene on the side of the road.  The feet also could be the feet of marching protesting workers carrying placards as was the case in my earlier "intersection" series from Johannesburg. It could also be the feet of a vagrant in the city sticking out from under cardboard as you walk by. Its patterning recalls the fringe on a dress or the pompoms on a Midnight Robber's hat. A friend who works in emergency services once told me that they are always puzzled by why the left shoe seems always to fall off first when someone runs or becomes injured. So one shoe on and one shoe off is suggestive in that sense.

 5. The empty lot or car – park can be interpreted as history converted to property  ( or maybe just the continued story of the purpose of property and the mercantile purpose for being here in our context ) has been with me for the last 5 years and is a development related to my use of the podium from Copenhagen in the "Terrastories" series. Now, it is about the empty lots in the city. The way our history is reduced to its most expedient exchange value as real estate - thus the reference to the dollar bills. It’s about the value/status of our past experiences/knowledge and ways of living in the current narrative of development and progress. It also infers the Peschier family plot as a form or sign as the Savannah continues to be paved, threatened and violated.

6. Is the loaf of bread on wheels going or coming? It’s derived from an image of a local minister in a cool car giving the "no comment" look from behind his wheels to journalists. This image from the daily newspapers in the mid 90’s made me think of those 1970s Tony Falcon movies from the Phillipines that I saw at Globe - the words "once you have bread and wheels you good to go..." came to mind.

7. The the faded figures in the center continue to reference the kinds of movies I grew up seeing in the 60s-70s. Wang Yu in "One Armed Swordsman', Clint Eastwood and Amitabh Bachchan are seen.  Then of course there is “the block” derived from our  local Percy moment in the last elections. The link between action movies, karate and spiritual blocks are played with. Some how,  the imagery from what is called  "Blaxploitation” films slipped out of the net even though they factor heavily in my other works. Somewhere in there is also a lady in patterned maxi- dress looking like those from the early 70's. This like many of the other images came from the newspapers. It is an image of our past national spiritual adviser.

8. The box on the head of the silhouette  (which comes up again and again in my work) with the "made in china" stamp and the mysterious figure that stands on the box like the Cipriani statue “in town” or like the contemporary politician who thinks that development status could be bought. But, the head is also "carrying-load" which is also a reference to previous works. I do not mean to compare Cipriani in this way but I wanted to express something  by comparing our past with our present.

9. The image has both topical and conceptual ideas of the moment or of my general concern. It tries to capture a moment or the moment so there is a time bending in that the world this work describes is any place like this, but also, this place. The recent "Dudus" event and similar ones here and in other parts of the hemisphere make that clear. It’s not a new question this collision of art and life. The word's "Now Showing" are layered into the image.  Are we living in a movie unmade?