Grant Recipients Roy Lichtenstein Award Visual Arts 2026

Christopher Cozier

Photo by Marlon Rouse.

2026 Roy Lichtenstein Award
Visual Arts
Visual Artist
Born 1959, Port of Spain, Trinidad & Tobago
Lives in Port of Spain, Trinidad & Tobago
He/Him

Artist Statement

For me, it takes time to understand or fully grasp, if ever or at all, the choices or the direction my work takes, the process of seeing, feeling and making—of finding my way through things experienced.

- December 2025

Biography

Christopher Cozier is a multidisciplinary artist, writer, curator, and cultural critic whose work investigates how historical and contemporary Caribbean experiences with colonialism and globalization shape understandings of the wider world. Cozier’s multifaceted practice—which encompasses drawing, installation, video, performance, and sound—offers spaces for deeply personal and poetic meditations on everyday life, rooted in Caribbean subjectivities. After completing graduate study in the United States in the 1980s, he returned to the Caribbean to further investigate the visual vocabularies and ways of working that are meaningful to him and his community.

Drawing is central to Cozier’s practice, and his densely layered works, which often resemble maps, visual essays, or storyboards, invite viewers to confront uncomfortable histories and contemplate questions of self-determination and agency. His Tropical Nights series, a collection of 268 works on paper created over nearly nine years in multiple locations, examines post-colonial Caribbean histories through a diaristic recounting of his upbringing and global travels. The series is held in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY.

Solo exhibitions of his work include New Level Heads, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA (2025) and All around us – elsewheres are beginnings and endings, Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, OH (2024). Group exhibitions include the 36th Bienal de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil (2025); Project Black Planet: The Art and Culture of Panafrica, Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL (2024); Prospect.6: The Future Is Present, The Harbinger Is Home, New Orleans, LA (2024); Forecast Form: Art in the Caribbean Diaspora, 1990s–Today, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Chicago, IL (2022); 11th Liverpool Biennial, Liverpool, United Kingdom (2021); the 14th Sharjah Biennial, Sharjah, UAE (2019); and Relational Undercurrents: Contemporary Art of the Caribbean Archipelago, Museum of Latin American Art, Long Beach, CA (2017).

Cozier is the recipient of the Pérez Prize from the Pérez Art Museum, Miami, FL (2023), a Prince Claus Award from the Prince Claus Fund (2013), and a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant (2004). Cozier was the Ruffin Distinguished Artist-in-Residence at the University of Virginia (2025) and participated in Rising Water Confab at the Rauschenberg Residency, Captiva, FL (2016), a month-long program exploring climate change.

He is co-director of Alice Yard, a contemporary art space and network based in Trinidad and Tobago, founded in 2006. Alice Yard participated in the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, Kerala, India (2025), and documenta fifteen, Kassel, Germany (2022). Cozier holds an M.F.A. from Rutgers University (1988) and a B.F.A. from Maryland Institute College of Art (1986).

Installation view of “Gas Men,” a video work on two screens that hang from the ceiling in a gallery space. Projected on the screens are two different time stamps of the film. On the screen to the left, which is the larger screen, is a still that includes a silhouette of two people in suits swinging gas pumps over their head, in front of an ocean’s horizon and a blue sky with low puffy clouds. On the screen to the right are the silhouettes of two people in suits, who appear to be fighting each other with the gas pumps, against a blue sky with puffy clouds. The screen on the right reflects onto the grey floor, as well as a small white bench, where someone is seated and looking at that screen. Behind the projection screens are two white gallery walls.

Installation view of Gas Men at the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, variable dimensions, 2014. Photo by Eat Pomegranate.

Installation view of Turbulence (Version 2) at the Stavanger Art Museum, Stavanger, Norway, 2021. Photo by Markus Johansson.

Installation view of “Home/Portal,” a red three-step stairway, which is placed on top of a stone staircase that runs through a sun-lit hill in a vibrant park or garden. There is grass all along the stone staircase and growing out of it. Lush green plants and little plants with red flowers are scattered throughout the hill. Disconnected from the stone staircase are five more steps made out of stone. The steps that would have connected the two are in ruins, with their stones dispersed throughout the grass.

Installation view of Home/Portal at St. Ann’s, Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, mixed-media installation with residing artists in various locations, variable dimensions, 2017–2023. Photo by LeXander Bryant.

Installation view of “Stepping,” against a white wall above a herringbone-patterned wooden floor. An uneven grid of 28 pieces of paper with drawings on them are individually hung on the wall with binder clips. To the left and right side of the grid are three pennant flags in green, red, and white, also separately attached to the wall with binder clips. Drawings are of men, hands, legs, figures, snakes, and amplification devices, among other objects, in earthy tones and red. Several of the drawings are realized on two pieces of paper, while the rest only make use of one. In the center of the grid is an amplification device that extends outward beyond the paper through braided red and black cords. The cords vary slightly in length and spacing, which creates a dynamic, wave-like form that casts layered shadows on the wall behind it.

Installation view of Stepping shown as part of Project a Black Planet: The Art and Culture of Panafrica at The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL, 2024-2025. Photo courtesy of The Art Institute of Chicago.

“dem things does bite too?” by Christopher Cozier is a black-ink drawing on white paper. Two snake-like forms are interlaced horizontally, with an additional ten similar forms interlacing the two vertically. Hands, shoes, bear feet, and objects that resemble machinery replace the heads and tails of the snakes. All of the bodies of the forms consist of very fine handwriting.

dem things does bite too?, 2015, ink on paper, 30" x 44". Collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Chicago, IL.

Installation view of “After the Appeal Will Come the Next Delivery,” which is many rows of pennant flags interspersed with one another. The flags have varying drawings and colors on them, mainly using earth tones, as well as bright red and green. Symbols made of black paper hang with the flags and patrons of the biennial walk under the flags, which have shadows reflecting onto the grey stone floor. Black and white digital prints are installed behind the work “Stepping.”

Installation view of After the Appeal Will Come the Next Delivery at the 36th Bienal de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil, 2025. Photo by © Nat Fejfar / Fundação Bienal de São Paulo.

Installation view of “Tropical Night,” a grid of drawings on 153 individual rectangular pieces of paper, each of which is attached to a white museum wall with a binder clip. The drawings all vary in images and colors, with recurring themes of hands, feet, plants, stars, guns, and infrastructure, in earth tones and reds. In front of the artwork, on the wooden floor, is a bench with a black cushion and silver legs.

Tropical Night, 2006-14, selection of 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, 9" × 7" each. Collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY.