We’ll Take Manhattan

Andil Gosine (BES ’96, PhD ’02), a professor at York University specializing in environmental art and justice, has been attracting attention and acclaim in New York City’s dynamic cultural scene. As an artist, curator and academic, he has been prominently featured in several esteemed Manhattan art institutions, including his curated exhibition featuring Guadalupian-Tamil artist Kelly Sinnapah Mary at the Aicon Gallery, from December 2023 to January 2024.

I am driven toward the truth, so if professional lines get blurred or crossed, so be it

Originally from Trinidad, Gosine shares a profound connection with New York City, where, during his youth, he collaborated with conceptual artist Yoko Ono through the Alexander Gray Associates gallery. His later New York exhibitions have often featured works by York graduates, such as Margaret Chen (MFA ’86, BFA ’84) and Amber Williams-King (MES ’21). These artists contributed to Gosine’s 2022 show “everything slackens in a wreck” at the Ford Foundation Gallery, drawing from his research at York University on environmental justice, migration and sexuality.

"Godfather’s Return," created with Gosine’s former supervisee amber williams-king, and about Colin Robinson, the gay activist and poet who is the subject of Gosine’s curated exhibition at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art in New York.

As both an artist and curator, Gosine maintains a porous boundary between his artistic and curatorial practices. Working heavily with archival materials, the work of other artists, and observational research, Gosine often finds it difficult to distinguish where his artistic work ends and his curatorial practice begins. “I am driven toward the truth,” Gosine explains. “So if professional lines get blurred or crossed, so be it. I draw on whatever skills are available to me.”

Recipient of the prestigious Beinecke Fellowship from the Clark Art Institute in the U.S. for his pioneering research in environmental art and justice, Gosine is poised for a series of upcoming exhibitions across the border. His next presentation, “Nature’s Wild,” is set to premiere at the Art Museum of the Americas in Washington, D.C., in 2025.

This new show will build upon the themes explored in his 2021 book of the same title, an exploration of humanism, queer theory, and animality in relation to queer desire in the Caribbean. With this forthcoming show, Gosine hopes to offer a richer and more multi-dimensional perspective through a variety of mediums that will include an installation, sculpture and video inspired by – among other things – his observations of Florida’s feral chicken population.

Feral chickens?

“It’s more about my theoretical views on desire,” says Gosine, with a laugh. “In our intricate web of cultural, political and ecological systems, which often seem on the verge of collapse, there’s always a return to ferality.” ■