Christopher Cozier

Tropical Night

2006-14

268 sheets with acrylic, ink, colored ink, pencil, and colored pencil on paper, some with stamped ink, stencil, solvent transfer, and cut-and-pasted colored and painted paper

Not on view

Tropical Night is a complex, diaristic account of Cozier’s experiences in his home country and as an itinerant artist traveling throughout the Caribbean, the U.S., and the world. Forms are repeated across its individual sheets: a historical map of part of the Eastern Hemisphere—the ancestral home of many of Trinidad and Tobago’s inhabitants today; a silhouette of the parliament building in the capital, Port of Spain; dancers from Carnival celebrations; and a household bench found throughout the region. The individual drawings are reshuffled into a new order each time the work is installed. “There are narrative passages. There are moments when I see a path, and I try to run it down,” Cozier says. And yet, “Sometimes I don’t want to prescribe the reading.”

Gallery label from

2024

Medium 268 sheets with acrylic, ink, colored ink, pencil, and colored pencil on paper, some with stamped ink, stencil, solvent transfer, and cut-and-pasted colored and painted paper
Dimensions Installation dimensions variable. Each sheet: 9 × 7" (22.9 × 17.8 cm)
Credit Latin American and Caribbean Fund and Fund for the Twenty-First Century
Object number 783.2022.1-268
Department Drawings and Prints

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