Cosmo Whyte, Jamaica, drawings
Golden Kicks.
ARTIST STATEMENT:
I am a trans-disciplinary artist who employs drawing, performance, and sculpture to create conceptual work that explores how notions of identity are disrupted by migration—particularly migration as an unfinished arc of motion whose final resting point remains an open-ended question. I situate my work in the liminal space between early culture shock and final acclimatization. My creative process begins through the interrogation of my own (racialized as black, gendered as man) body, and the personal memories that are embedded within it. I use this archive as my entry point into collective political interrogations, with one of my current interests being the idea of ritual and how ritual—or the absence thereof—maps out ways of performing, experiencing, and feeling masculinity, race, and place (or placelessness).
Keloid Drawing #1.
Keloid Drawing #2.
Sweet Sweet Back.
BIO:
Cosmo Whyte was born in St. Andrew, Jamaica in 1982. The Jamaican born artist attended Bennington College in Vermont for his Bachelor in Fine Arts, Maryland Institute College of Art for his Post-Baccalaureate Certificate and the University of Michigan for his MFA. He has been in a number of exhibitions including the 2013 Forward Arts Foundation Artist of the year Retrospective in Atlanta, GA, 2012 “Outward Reach: 9 Jamaican Photography and New Media Artists” at the Art Museum of the Americas in Washington, DC, 2011 “African Continuum” at the United Nations Gallery in New York, 2011 Mover and Shaker show at Museum of Contemporary Art Georgia and the 2010 and 2014 Jamaica Biannual. In 2010 he was the winner of the Forward Art emerging artist of the year award. In 2015 he was the recipient of the International Sculpture Center’s “Outstanding Student Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture Award”. Cosmo Whyte is currently a professor at Morehouse College.(text website artist)