Si­mon Lee

Even if you've nev­er heard of him (be­cause he's not a gallery man in ei­ther sense) or wit­ting­ly seen his work (al­though you may well have seen it on walls in town) let's throw our hats in the air for Christo­pher Co­zi­er, one of the 2013 Prince Claus awardees. Co­zi­er now joins the ranks of oth­er Caribbean Claus lau­re­ates like Pe­ter Min­shall (who won the prin­ci­pal award in 2001), Chalk­dust, Hait­ian writ­ers Fran­ke­ti­enne and Ket­tly Mars, Ja­maican writer Er­na Brod­ber and Mar­tini­quan writer Patrick Chamoi­seau.Since 1997 the Prince Claus Fund of the King­dom of the Nether­lands has been ho­n­our­ing 11 in­di­vid­u­als or or­gan­i­sa­tions "whose cul­tur­al ac­tions have a pos­i­tive im­pact on the de­vel­op­ment of their so­ci­eties." Es­pous­ing what may of­ten seem in T&T the un­fa­mil­iar con­cept that "cul­ture is a ba­sic need," the Prince Claus Fund has made a pol­i­cy of "high­light­ing sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions in re­gions where re­sources or op­por­tu­ni­ties for cul­tur­al ex­pres­sion, cre­ative pro­duc­tion and preser­va­tion of cul­tur­al her­itage are lim­it­ed." Con­se­quent­ly, awardees are se­lect­ed from Africa, Asia, Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean.

It is salu­tary to note that among the cri­te­ria used for se­lect­ing awardees are: "artis­tic and in­tel­lec­tu­al qual­i­ties, ex­per­i­men­ta­tion and in­no­va­tion, au­dac­i­ty and tenac­i­ty." Co­zi­er's ci­ta­tion de­scribes him as "...a mul­ti-tal­ent­ed cul­tur­al ac­ti­va­tor with a pro­found im­pact on cul­tur­al de­vel­op­ment across the Caribbean." Be­sides "his in­formed and in­ci­sive art­work in di­verse me­dia,"Co­zi­er has been ho­n­oured for his men­tor­ing and sup­port of "lo­cal and re­gion­al artists, pro­vid­ing cri­tiques, es­tab­lish­ing di­a­logues with them across vir­tu­al space and ini­ti­at­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties."The Prince Claus award al­so ac­knowl­edges Co­zi­er's sem­i­nal con­tri­bu­tion "in the evo­lu­tion of con­tem­po­rary art dis­course in the Caribbean," which has been rapid­ly ex­pand­ing and re­ceiv­ing glob­al recog­ni­tion, thanks in no small part to Co­zi­er's pro­lif­ic writ­ing, and his ten-year ed­i­tor­ship of the Ja­maican-based jour­nal Small Axe."His com­mit­ment to re­search and crit­i­cal en­quiry have ex­pand­ed the di­a­logue be­tween tra­di­tion­al aca­d­e­m­ic dis­ci­plines and the vi­su­al, and helped to lib­er­ate lo­cal dis­course from pre­dictable tropes and stereo­types."

It is no ex­ag­ger­a­tion to say that what the UK-based Ja­maican cul­tur­al the­o­rist Stu­art Hall has been posit­ing about Caribbean and di­as­poric cul­ture and iden­ti­ty ("Far from be­ing eter­nal­ly fixed in some es­sen­tialised past, they are sub­ject to the con­tin­u­ous 'play' of his­to­ry, cul­ture and pow­er...iden­ti­ty...con­sti­tut­ed, not out­side, but with­in rep­re­sen­ta­tion") since the 1970s, cen­tral to his de­vel­op­ment of the post­mod­ern mul­ti-dis­ci­pli­nary school of Cul­tur­al Stud­ies, has been de­con­struct­ed and tak­en in new di­rec­tions by Caribbean-based artist/writer/thinker Christo­pher Co­zi­er.

And yet, he was gen­uine­ly sur­prised to be nom­i­nat­ed: "It was un­ex­pect­ed." Mind­ful of pre­vi­ous Caribbean awardees, Co­zi­er al­sopaid trib­ute to an­oth­er 2013 awardee, the Colom­bian artist Os­car Munoz and was "glad to be con­sid­ered in that cat­e­go­ry."

Iron­i­cal­ly, Co­zi­er got the news of his nom­i­na­tion back in June pri­or to his show in Berlin, while a guest of Dorothea and Ul­ric Fiedler, a Ger­man Koln-based cou­ple, "some of the first sol­id sup­port­ers of con­tem­po­rary art in T&T." Dur­ing their stay here in the ear­ly 1990s, the Fiedlers ac­cu­mu­lat­ed the largest col­lec­tion of con­tem­po­rary T&T art, all now in stor­age in Ger­many. Co­zi­er re­mem­bers the lo­cal de­ri­sion di­rect­ed at these for­eign col­lec­tors and con­trasts the "mint con­di­tion" of their col­lec­tion, with the one piece he lent the Na­tion­al Mu­se­um here: "I got it back 10 years lat­er, com­plete­ly de­stroyed." Co­zi­er's re­flex re­sponse to the gen­er­ous Prince Claus 25,000 Eu­ro award is, "It al­lows me to take risks."As a fa­ther of four, op­er­at­ing in a so­ci­ety which has his­tor­i­cal­ly been wary at best, but more usu­al­ly hos­tile, to ex­per­i­men­ta­tion in the arts, Co­zi­er is well aware that "A lot of artists here have to do things they don't want to. Wa­ter­colour and land­scape paint­ing is the (equiv­a­lent of) biki­ni mas."He's prag­mat­ic enough to recog­nise, "The Art World is where the mon­ey is...I'm not judg­ing it" and his prax­is can be seen as a log­i­cal de­vel­op­ment of the close re­la­tion­ship be­tween the avant garde and com­mod­i­ty cul­ture. Con­se­quent­ly giv­en the dearth of op­por­tu­ni­ty here (to earn a liv­ing, pay the bills) from his art, "One of the main rea­sons I show abroad rather than here, is that I get com­mis­sions."

Much of Co­zi­er's con­cern about how art is per­ceived/mis­con­ceived in T&T fo­cus­es on lim­i­ta­tion, which sti­fles rather than pro­motes pro­duc­tion and ex­per­i­men­ta­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly with young artists: "Here you're not en­cour­aged to do stuff. Abroad they'll tell you, "Do some­thing to im­press us...we want ex­cite­ment." While he's still wary of out­sider ap­pro­pri­a­tion and es­sen­tial­is­ing of Caribbean art, which prompt­ed his re­turn in 1989 af­ter study­ing art in New York, 20 years on, he hopes "We've passed the stage of the 'ex­ot­ic Oth­er' (al­though re­cent­ly a woman in Ken­tucky com­ment­ed with the un­wit­ting con­de­scen­sion of ig­no­rance 'Wow you're so ar­tic­u­late!')."Ne­go­ti­at­ing a mid­dle pas­sage be­tween here and there has nev­er been easy for Caribbean artists; "Search­ing for ways to cre­ate mean­ing­ful­ly in what...have be­come very ag­gres­sive, shrewd, util­i­tar­i­an and mer­can­tile-dri­ven Caribbean so­ci­eties, is quite a chal­lenge."

Art has nev­er been lib­er­at­ed from its sub­sidiary plan­ta­tion-so­ci­ety sta­tus: "We on­ly en­counter art in com­mer­cial spaces. Gallery spaces are on­ly about sell­ing, so the pub­lic has a lim­it­ed view." This lim­i­ta­tion is com­pound­ed by me­dia cov­er­age- or lack of it � as gen­er­al­ly the me­dia on­ly cov­ers what is shown in the gal­leries. He con­trasts this de­fi­cien­cy with the half page ar­ti­cle in a lead­ing Dan­ish news­pa­per about a joint show he held in Copen­hagen, Den­mark with a Chi­nese artist in 2002.

Con­se­quent­ly, as an in­di­vid­ual artist Co­zi­er has on­ly mount­ed four so­lo shows in Trinidad, (the last in 2000) while show­ing ex­ten­sive­ly abroad (most re­cent­ly: Tate Liv­er­pool UK 2010, Jo­han­nes­burg, South Africa 2011, Ken­tucky USA 2012, New York, Berlin, Mi­a­mi 2013). For many oth­ers the on­ly op­tion is to leave, in or­der to es­cape the con­straints of our most­ly com­mer­cial con­cep­tion of art. "All our ma­jor fig­ures are transna­tion­al, on the move. Even the ones who claim to be 'lo­cal', do lec­ture tours."Iron­i­cal­ly it is the new gen­er­a­tion of artists, whom Co­zi­er has been aid­ing and abet­ting for more than two decades, who thanks to dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion and the in­ter­net are mak­ing it "out there". Again Co­zi­er is crit­i­cal of the lack of recog­ni­tion/val­i­da­tion they meet at home, com­pared with sports­men and women or even our writ­ers; "How do we de­fine ac­com­plish­ment for artists?"It was pre­cise­ly to ad­dress such is­sues and as a re­sponse to "lo­cal in­sti­tu­tion­al de­fien­cies" that Co­zi­er, along with writer/crit­ic Nicholas Laugh­lin and mu­si­cian Shel­don Hold­er es­tab­lished Al­ice Yard, a non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tion based in the Lennard fam­i­ly back­yard on Roberts Street, Wood­brook in 2006. "It was im­por­tant to cre­ate a space with­in which peo­ple...can feel the free­dom to try new things."

The Yard hosts artis­tic, lit­er­ary and mu­sic pro­grammes, and aids projects in start-up and de­vel­op­men­tal stages. Its reach has now spread far be­yond Trinidad, with vis­it­ing in-res­i­dence artists, cu­ra­tors, film and video mak­ers and new me­dia prac­ti­tion­ers all par­tic­i­pat­ing.Young artists have em­braced cy­ber­space and its pos­si­bil­i­ties, which for Co­zi­er has cre­at­ed a "crit­i­cal space" where con­ver­sa­tion and di­a­logue, col­lab­o­ra­tion and in­no­va­tion are now pos­si­ble across pre­vi­ous ge­o­graph­ic and na­tion­al di­vides: "ac­cess al­lows a new gen­er­a­tion of artists to cre­ate im­ages and dis­sem­i­nate them in ways that break down tra­di­tion­al hi­er­ar­chies of skills and spe­cialised knowl­edge as a means to de­fine val­ue." The chal­lenge is now for gov­ern­ments and in­sti­tu­tions to recog­nise these op­por­tu­ni­ties.As an ad­vo­cate for con­tem­po­rary Caribbean art, Co­zi­er has cu­rat­ed im­por­tant re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al ex­hi­bi­tions in­clud­ing Para­mari­bo Span (Suri­name 2010), Wrestling with the Im­age: Caribbean In­ter­ven­tions (Wash­ing­ton DC 2011), which fea­tured 36 artists from the An­glo­phone, Fran­coph­o­ne and Dutch sub-re­gions and is cur­rent­ly a 2014 Satel­lite Ad­vi­so­ry Cu­ra­tor to the pres­ti­gious in­ter­na­tion­al bi­en­ni­al SITE Sante Fe, New Mex­i­co.

In the cat­a­logue to Wrestling with the Im­age, Co­zi­er ar­tic­u­lates the pos­si­bil­i­ties for a more in­clu­sive Caribbean aes­thet­ic, which moves be­yond the parochial, na­tion­al­is­tic or in­su­lar. He writes of a Caribbean "as space rather than place", a space "shaped by wher­ev­er Caribbean peo­ple find them­selves...a di­a­logue about dis­per­sal, rather than just dis­place­ment." He al­so writes of his em­pa­thy with the artists at that par­tic­u­lar ex­hi­bi­tion "for them, the re­gion re­mains an on­go­ing work in progress..their works al­low us a glimpse in­to the mul­ti-faceted ex­pe­ri­ence of the Caribbean."In the face of mass and com­mod­i­ty cul­ture and the neg­a­tive in­roads glob­al­i­sa­tion has made in Caribbean so­ci­eties, we need all the glimpses we can get, to know and recre­ate our­selves. Un­doubt­ed­ly Co­zi­er, like Pa­pa Leg­ba, is keen to open the gates for all and ful­ly de­serves the Prince Claus award, which will be pre­sent­ed to him here next month.