TROPICAL NIGHT
CHRISTOPHER COZIER, 2006–2014
Two hundred and sixty-eight drawings hanging from paper clips. Each one about the size of a paperback. It looks like somebody took a notebook apart and pinned it to the wall mid-thought. Around 2006, Christopher Cozier, an artist from Trinidad, is traveling constantly. Residencies, biennials, invitations. His studio keeps changing. A hotel room. A friend's place. Wherever he can sit down. So he starts drawing on sheets small enough to pack flat. Nine inches by seven. Then he keeps going for eight years. Meanwhile, the title is running a con on you. Tropical Night. Your brain supplies the beach. Warm breeze. Drink with fruit in it. The Caribbean made for people who have return tickets. The drawings don't cooperate. Little figures. Fences. Notes scribbled over notes. A map keeps showing up. A dime-store rubber stamp, printed wet enough that the latitudes smear. Shapes repeat from sheet to sheet the way worries do. Whatever this tropical night is, nobody's sleeping. And nothing here stays fixed. The drawings hang from clips because Cozier rearranges them every time they're shown. Same pages. Different thought. Now find the grapes. A neat little cluster. They keep turning up, sheet after sheet. Cozier didn't invent them. He took them from the cover of Nelson's West Indian Readers, a British schoolbook first published in 1928 that taught generations of Caribbean children to read. Before they could write their own sentences, somebody had already picked the pictures. Cozier spent eight years filling these pages. Some of it was waiting for him before he was born.