Christopher Cozier

Christopher Cozier (born 1959 in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago) is a Trinidadian multidisciplinary artist, writer, curator, and cultural critic whose practice encompasses drawing, printmaking, video, installation, performance, sound, sculpture, and collaborative cultural work. Based in Port of Spain, Cozier examines how the historical and contemporary experiences of the Caribbean including colonialism, globalization, migration, nationalism, economic dependency, and cultural resistance can generate alternative ways of understanding the wider world. His work frequently begins with notebook drawings and develops into installations, moving-image works, prints, and staged actions that combine personal observation with broader questions about history, geography, power, and self-determination. Drawing occupies a particularly important place in Cozier’s practice. His works on paper often function simultaneously as diaries, maps, storyboards, visual essays, and speculative records, accumulating fragments of text, symbols, bodies, architectural forms, everyday objects, and memories. His expansive series Tropical Night (2006–14), comprising 268 sheets and now in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, emerged through years of travel and work across different locations. Through its fragmented visual language, the project reflects upon postcolonial Caribbean history, childhood memory, political culture, migration, development, and the artist’s experience of moving between Trinidad and other parts of the world. Cozier received a BFA in Painting from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 1986 and an MFA in Visual Arts from Rutgers University’s Mason Gross School of the Arts in 1988. After completing his graduate studies in the United States, he returned to Trinidad and Tobago. In addition to his individual practice, he is a co-founder and co-director of Alice Yard, the influential Port of Spain–based contemporary art space and network founded in 2006, which participated in documenta fifteen in 2022. His work has appeared in the Havana Biennials, Brooklyn Museum, Tate Liverpool, Berlin Biennale, Sharjah Biennial, Liverpool Biennial, Prospect New Orleans, Art Institute of Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Museum of Modern Art, and São Paulo Biennial. His honors include the 2026 Roy Lichtenstein Award, 2023 Pérez Prize, 2013 Prince Claus Award, and a 2004 Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant.