Uncomfortable: The Art of Christopher Cozier

Uncomfortable journeys through the work and ideas of Christopher Cozier, a leading contemporary artist in the Caribbean. The video presents Cozier's witty and incisive drawings, installations and videos in the context of post-independence Trinidad with its oil-rich economy, complicated ethnic politics, and vibrant cultural forms. Treated in this video are the failure of McDonald's to take root (while other fast-food chains proliferate); an art market that validates only pretty pictures of flowers and beaches, while the country is obsessed with kidnappings and murders; and the systemic difficulties of a Third World artist circulating internationally. It illuminates the relationship between the local and the global.

Christopher Cozier's biography: Christopher Cozier is a contemporary artist and writer based in Trinidad. He holds a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art and an MFA from Rutgers University. His work has been widely exhibited internationally, including at the Havana Bienale, the Bag Factory in Johannesburg, TENT in Rotterdam, CCA7 in Port of Spain, the Museum of the Americas in Washington, DC, the Art Foundry in Barbados, AfricAmericA 2002, "Nouveau Monde/mondes nouveaux" in Montreal, the Art Centre of the City of Copenhagen, and A Space in Toronto. He sits on the editorial board of Small Axe, A Caribbean Journal of Criticism, and is an editorial advisor to BOMB magazine.

"A sequence of shots shows… megaphone, a crutch, a small wrought iron table of a type popular in 1960's Trinidad. These are all objects converted into ironic symbols in Cozier's multimedia work, aimed at finding a vocabulary to describe the experience of living in a small post-colonial Caribbean island that has never fit the white-sand-and-palm-trees stereotype…."

--Nicholas Laughlin, Modern Painters

"Concise and insightful… A terrific introduction to Cozier's art…"

--Glenn Sumi, NOW Magazine "