Mar­sha Pearce

It has been 13 years since vi­su­al artist, cu­ra­tor and writer Christo­pher Co­zi­er has ex­hib­it­ed his work in T&T. His lat­est show at Y Art Gallery is an amal­gam of prepara­to­ry draw­ings pro­duced for var­i­ous ex­hi­bi­tions he has held around the world–New York, Jo­han­nes­burg, Mi­a­mi–be­tween 2010 and 2013.What Co­zi­er makes ac­ces­si­ble to the T&T au­di­ence, through a bridg­ing of word and im­age, is a vo­cab­u­lary with which one can be­gin to speak and at­tend to mat­ters of lack and loss in our so­ci­ety."My work is about traces and mem­o­ry–the thing that is not there. It is about what is ab­sent. I have been think­ing about that a lot since the de­struc­tion of Carlisle Chang's art at our air­port. It is a wound," says Co­zi­er.The artist ad­dress­es the wound of ab­sence by as­sert­ing its very per­cep­ti­ble pres­ence through the trans­la­tion of every­day ob­jects that be­come a pow­er­ful sign or in­dex of an ex­is­tence hol­lowed out by vi­o­lence, pol­i­tics, greed and in­dif­fer­ence. Im­ages of an emp­ty lot of land or car park–what Co­zi­er calls "all that's left"–and the re­cur­ring mo­tif of feet (an im­age that stays with Co­zi­er since he saw the low­er legs of one of four youths who were shot and killed near his home) are among the vi­su­al par­a­digm he is cre­at­ing."My in­ter­est in the dead body is con­nect­ed to the ab­sence of dreams, the spir­it and po­ten­tial; and the emp­ty lot sug­gests the ab­sence of our his­tor­i­cal lega­cy–the era­sure of our ar­chi­tec­ture," Co­zi­er says.

In a strik­ing im­age of a man clad in a shirt, jack­et and trousers eat­ing out of a pa­per bag, Co­zi­er not on­ly draws on child­hood mem­o­ries of see­ing class­mates hid­ing to eat, but al­so ref­er­ences art­work he saw on a trip to Spain: Fran­cis­co Goya's paint­ing of the Ro­man mytho­log­i­cal Sat­urn de­vour­ing his son."We are go­ing through that kind of Sat­ur­na­lia where the State is de­vour­ing its po­ten­tial. Look at the so­ci­ety now. Pol­i­tics is be­ing used to get hands on mon­ey rather than to do good," Co­zi­er says.He in­fus­es his work with both hu­mour and grav­i­tas to pro­duce a lan­guage that is ap­proach­able and si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly tren­chant in its ca­pac­i­ty to cut to the heart of the mat­ter. His piece Ghost Bread is a play­ful take on our hunger. He us­es a hov­er­ing, spec­tral slice of bread to sig­ni­fy the elu­sive­ness of all that we think we need to sur­vive."It is the sus­te­nance you nev­er quite get, and it is a white sand­wich loaf, so you know it won't re­al­ly help you."Co­zi­er us­es the breeze brick or ven­ti­la­tion block, an el­e­ment that char­ac­teris­es much of our ar­chi­tec­ture, to think about is­sues of de­vel­op­ment for post­colo­nial in­de­pen­dent na­tions and un­re­alised vi­sions of promise."The bricks were a big part of the era in which I grew up. They were part of a de­vel­op­ment nar­ra­tive, trop­i­cal ar­chi­tec­ture, na­tion eu­pho­ria, new hous­ing schemes. They ex­ist­ed in a world of promise. Now we see footage of crises and vi­o­lence and the ven­ti­la­tion-block pat­tern is in the back­ground. You re­alise it is not a world of promise–that there is some­thing dystopic about it."

In his se­ries called The Ar­rest, Co­zi­er is in­flu­enced by the lyrics of so­ca songs which, in a num­ber of cas­es, come with in­struc­tions to put our hands in the air. This idea pro­pelled the artist in the di­rec­tion of thoughts of be­ing ar­rest­ed, of be­ing seized and tak­en in­to cus­tody and of the halt­ing of progress."We are all in a state of ar­rest. We are ar­rest­ed by our so­cial con­di­tions," he adds.

In many of his works, Co­zi­er blurs the line be­tween what art schol­ar WJT Mitchell calls ex­pe­ri­ences be­tween the see­able and the sayable, show­ing and telling. Co­zi­er melds words and im­ages to pro­duce draw­ings that at­tempt to har­ness the com­mu­nica­tive and sym­bol­ic ca­pac­i­ty of both modes of think­ing.In his ex­hi­bi­tion one can find a para­graph of words form­ing a leg or an arm, lead­ing to a sketched foot or hand. In one piece, an in­com­plete pic­ture of a foot and leg is ac­com­pa­nied by the words: "When you miss me I gone yes."Co­zi­er takes a phrase used in our dai­ly par­lance, ex­tract­ing it from its ca­su­al us­age when we tell some­one we are leav­ing, to give it new, weighty mean­ing. All that is gone in our so­ci­ety–have we no­ticed those ab­sences?"I am al­ways try­ing to find a way to get im­ages and words to meet–try­ing to find a vo­cab­u­lary. My draw­ings are made from free-as­so­ci­a­tion writ­ing. I am writ­ing about what is go­ing on in the coun­try and the way I feel. It is a flow of anx­i­eties."My thoughts re­veal them­selves go­ing in­to the work, but then they ob­scure them­selves as the writ­ing be­comes lay­ered. I find this is an in­ter­est­ing ten­sion," he says.Christo­pher Co­zi­er's ca­reer in the vi­su­al arts has long been about mak­ing con­nec­tions and forg­ing di­a­logues. For over 25 years, he has been run­ning artists' work­shops, ex­changes and res­i­den­cies link­ing lo­cal artists with in­ter­na­tion­al prac­ti­tion­ers. He was re­cent­ly grant­ed a Prince Claus Award for his con­tri­bu­tion to the de­vel­op­ment of cul­tur­al ac­tion in the Caribbean.

While his work deals with the sub­ject of lack, it is al­so tied to fa­cil­i­tat­ing sup­port for and en­gage­ment with con­tem­po­rary art prac­tice."I want peo­ple to see my work as more than ob­jects and that they can en­ter the head space I am strug­gling with. At the end of the day, my ob­jec­tive is to get peo­ple here to take con­tem­po­rary art­work se­ri­ous­ly."