Essays
The Power of Simplicity in Christopher Cozier’s New Level Heads
March 2025
As the cardboard heads rhythmically bob back and forth, casting their shadows upon the
back wall of the Ruffin Gallery, Christopher Cozier silently asks questions of the displacement
and movement of Caribbean people. When visiting the work, it’s difficult not to marvel at the
power of the simplicity in Christopher Cozier’s New Level Heads. He takes everyday resources:
wood, string, cardboard, and light, and converts them into a deeply moving work of art bridging
beauty, audience engagement, and Caribbean history. However, work like this should come at no
surprise when looking at Cozier’s body of work over his illustrious almost 40-year career as a
Trinidadian visual artist, curator, and writer. Through his series titled Tropical
Night, of which 250+ small works are owned and on view at the Museum of Modern Art, Cozier
has been working to deconstruct the postcolonial narrative of paradise intertwined with
Caribbean island culture. His curatorial work in Wrestling with the Image (2011)
challenges reductive views of Caribbean art, highlighting artists who confront colonial histories
and diasporic identity. New Level Heads continues this trajectory of Cozier’s
work, this time transforming simple materials and silent, rhythmic motion into a powerful
meditation on Caribbean displacement. Through shadow, repetition, and audience engagement,
Cozier evokes the lingering effects of colonial and postcolonial displacements, continuing his
challenge against reductive Caribbean narratives. In this paper, I will dive into Cozier’s practice
as a multidisciplinary artist, provide a formal and personal analysis of the work, and examine
how Cozier’s formal strategies and viewer engagement align with broader conversations in
Caribbean visual culture.
Christopher Cozier moved from his home in Trinidad to the US in 1983, and along with
him came the residual effects of Caribbean colonialism and a need to interrogate those inherited
systems. Upon his graduation from MICA undergrad in 1986, Cozier struggled in his painting,
with few showing interest in the large-scale paintings he was doing at the time. He and his wife
were both painters, but in his own words, he “could never paint as wonderfully as she could,”
and felt there was no substantial market and discourse around his work to mobilize it in the art
community. After a series of internal negotiations, Cozier decided to shift his practice towards a
more conceptual framework where he expanded his work beyond painting while dismantling
colonial Caribbean narratives. Maintaining the design and printmaking principles he had learned
while at MICA, Rutgers Grad, and the advertising agencies he worked at, Cozier’s work became
multidisciplinary, rooted in undervalued Caribbean histories and narratives of power.
Drawing has long been a vital part of Cozier’s practice as he believes it to be a vital form
of notetaking for artists, valuing the informal and often spontaneous creations done by artists. His past work, most notably the Tropical Night series (Exhibit A),
speaks to his devotion to drawing and conceptually rich work, as it consists of 268 separate 9x7”
drawings, collages, and prints all meant to critique the exoticized representation of the Caribbean. This work done between 2006-2014 is reflection of Cozier’s way of seeing the world,
giving himself permission to play and intertwine symbols from the “very particular historical
experience” of being Caribbean. Alongside this, Cozier found interest in reproduceable
work that could be sent from place to place, creating prints in his early career that minimize
travel costs, allowing his work to be shown to broader audiences.
Moving forward in his career, this and wider interest in performativity and spectacle, steered Cozier to creating more public and audience engaging works, ultimately leading up to his
creation of New Level Heads.
While at first glance New Level Heads may appear modest, it is carefully crafted and
thoughtfully provoking in its formal qualities. The installation, created in 2016 by Cozier during
the Rauschenberg Residency, departs from traditional modes of art, instead being composed of
18 wooden beams, each seemingly store-bought and suspended horizontally by two strings on
either end. Each beam bears two flat carboard head silhouettes facing one another on
each side, with one eye cut out, the same silhouette shape, and consisting of two shades of brown
and black. Below these beams all suspended in a row, lies a light, projecting the head’s ghostly
shadows along the wall of the gallery (Exhibit B). At first, the work is static but upon further
examination of the works exhibition materials, I realized it invited interaction from its audience.
Viewers can softly, or violently if they so choose, push the beams, causing the heads and their
shadows to sway in a rhythmic, unsettling motion. The historical references are undeniable in
this work and Cozier transforms minimalist materials into a quietly unsettling meditation on
Caribbean displacement; it is amazing what can be done with so little. The combination of
shadow, movement, repetition, and silence create the eerie and powerful reflection on Caribbean
history we now expect from Cozier.
Cozier has consistently resisted static and romanticized images of the Caribbean region,
and New Level Heads, continues this trajectory. The motion of the beams and their shadows
evoke the rocking of a ship, providing a not-so-subtle allusion to the transatlantic passage and
repeated cycles of displacement through Caribbean history. The heads, all in near-identical form,
suggest the erasure of individual identity under colonial systems. They are not portraits of
notable figures, but anonymous and interchangeable in the systems that contain them. This relates to Nelson Maldonado-Torres ideas in his On Metaphysical Catastrophe essay, where he
reflects upon the dehumanization in coloniality where black and indigenous lives are rendered
ontologically absent. Cozier continues Maldonado-Torres’ idea of “the
decolonial turn,” as he radically questions the effects of colonial horrors and what voices are
meant to be heard. Cozier’s use of repetition and rhythmic, swaying
motion in New Level Heads also echoes Benítez-Rojo’s idea of the Caribbean as “a repeating
island,” where history unfolds in cycles rather than linearly. The shadows the
head’s project enhance the unsettling nature of historical memory within the piece. Behind the
work they loom, a lingering presence, an aftermath of the history that is still being interrogated in
the present by artists and historians like Cozier. Conceptually charged but simply made, New
Level Heads is a compelling example of how quiet gestures can carry more weight than the most
complex of pieces.
As I interact with the work as a white man and a large beneficiary of the historical
systems being questioned, I am forced to reconcile with the discomfort of my participation.
When I approach the artwork and push the beams, my physical interaction with the work is a
direct reflection of the interactions white people had in the past. Before I forced the installation
into motion, the heads lied there silently, unbothered and at peace before I abruptly shifted them
into motion. I, once a viewer now an active participant, am implicated in the act, with the
pushing of the beams becoming metaphorically loaded and the silence further amplifying my
internal negotiation. The installation does not allow for passive viewing, rather demanding
activation, serving as a confrontational statement of interaction. The works placement at the
University of Virginia, a campus built by enslaved laborers, adds an additional layer of
complexity to the work, further confronting the legacy of colonialism and the institutions that upheld it. While I have not faced any of the displacement being contended with, New Level
Heads forces me to consider what it means to move history, and how even in the present the
cycles of the past persist.
Christopher Cozier’s New Level Heads stands as a premier example of his quietly
profound work. It does not rely on bright forms or spectacle, but instead uses repetition, motion,
and shadow to evoke the still unresolved history of Caribbean people. Cozier has a long history
of resisting the picturesque images of the Caribbean, and this exhibition, now on view at the
University of Virginia, is no different. Instead of furthering the narrative of the Caribbean as a
place of paradise, Cozier instead offers it as a space shaped by displacement, memory, and
instability. Through the act of viewer participation, he implicates the audience in the motion of
history. The shadows cast on the wall expand the head silhouetted forms we see, distorting them,
and reminding us of the ever-present effects of the past. Cozier doesn’t provide resolution with
this work; instead, his simple work offers rhythm, silence, and repetition as tools for meditation.
New Level Heads asks us to recognize that history moves through us while we quietly
contemplate the dark shadows left by the actions of those before us.
Exhibit A: Cozier, Tropical Nights, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)
Exhibit B: Cozier, New Level Heads, Ruffin Gallery @ University of Virginia (Personal Photo)