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 )

“All That’s Left”

New print edition derived from the "Tropical Night" series.
 
Christopher Cozier, All That’s Left, 2011, set of eight ten-color screen prints,  9 x 7 inches each. 

Made at Axelle Fine Arts in Brooklyn in collaboration with Luther Davis and his team, and supported by David Krut projects, this silkscreen edition is a suite of 8 images that are in concert with each other. I am searching for an associative connection like a Tarot reading of a given moment. It is also an adaptation of newer and older elements of Tropical Night's visual language. The basic idea comes from a five gourde coin that I have had on me since my first visit to Haiti some years ago. The coin was astonishingly smooth and the figures of the revolution had become so worn down that they looked like shadows or silhouettes - visible but unrecognizable. You sort of know it’s them if you know the history. What does this say about the use of these figures within national narratives and the current political reality.
This connected with the empty lots that I have been looking at over the last few years ( which first appeared in the 2010 TTFF edition "now showing") that I now call either "all that is left" or "Site of Exchange. " I am thinking of our troubled relation to history or the predicament of it in a situation in which all is expediently transformed into a cash value, The thousands of paintings of those Colonial edifices that are now mostly demolished and converted into square feet of real estate and car parks come to mind. So for the rest of us, history or memory becomes an act of conjuring. We are only left to imagine what was there before when we encounter these empty lots. So what do they represent? Is this a moment of opportunity or of violation? Within this set of images, there are other signs and or forms being investigated but I do not want of over explain. I myself need to figure what they may be producing while I look at them over time.

Available through David Krut Projects NY - see here

See interview by Kristyna Comer on the edition here

New version in "Vous êtes ici," Martinique.

Another version related to the space and moment consisting of 210 drawings.

Tropical Night in Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea (CGAC), Spain

Photo by Nuno Ferreira

Afro Modern installation.

Installation of larger version of "Tropical Night"  in AFRO MODERN at the TATE, Liverpool. 189 drawings were used instead of the 136 used in the "Infinite Island" show at the  Brooklyn Museum in 2007.


Getting the pins and clips up accurately. It took one full day.






Final arrangement - click here for detail of new arrangement.

MADE IN CHINA

"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.
I am about to install a newer updated version of "Tropical Night" at the TATE Liverpool, in the Afro Modern exhibition. I packed my little rubber stamp.

"Down Diego"

Titles ( L-R) : "D'Vale", "Red Horny Boy Ride", "Starting Blocks" and "Itchy Lawn and Sticky Fingers". "Down Diego" is yet another thread that I just noticed within the group of new drawings. It is another of those works that engage, the unmentionable or unseen - tropical suburbia in the late 60's. I like it because it contradicts much of my usual concerns about the use of the women's bodies within conventional gendered narratives. It carries a recurring theme that I have avoided or deferred for some time now, but this series is not about being rational. It's about sensing rather than censoring. In one of my early texts in the 90's, I heard myself referring to Diego Martin as " that suburban fungus on the landscape" what of this moment from my growing years would create such a reaction / description.

Dartmouth Sequence

Image of the artist in the Dartmouth College exhibition space by photographer Joseph Mehling. This new group, from the ongoing Tropical Night project, I have called it "little gestures" because the image of the bench dominates and also as it feels a bit lighter in mood and tone than the sequence in New York.

Installing Tropical Night in Brooklyn

Christopher Cozier installing the Tropical Night drawings at the Brooklyn Museum, August 2007


Infinite Island, an exhibition of the work of forty-five contemporary artists from the Caribbean, opens tomorrow at the Brooklyn Museum. It includes an installation of two hundred of the Tropical Night drawings. At the museum blog, curatorial assistant Tamara Schechter describes the process of installing the drawings, which occupy their own small gallery off one of the larger spaces.



Installation shot courtesy the Brooklyn Museum

Looking for stories

There is a kind of bibliophile’s parlour game in which you arrange books on a shelf so that the sequence of titles on their spines tells a story.

You might do something similar with the titles of the individual drawings in the Tropical Night series.

Feathered Bat Descending. In the Dance. Hop Skip Jump. Jump Up. Shot Call. Flight.

Coming and Going. Immersed in Explanations. Submerged.

Oxford Journey. Castaway. New World. Making Progress.

A Next Day. Sitting Here Watching. Open Seas. Day In, Day Out.

After the Fire. Crown. Thorns. Bird Stress. Air. The Hills. That Tree. The Hunger.

Another kind of narrative. Another way, perhaps, of not seeing the thing at hand, the marks on the piece of paper before me.

--NL