Cosmo Whyte

How These Artists Learn From Each Other | Cosmo Whyte and Nari Ward

Whyte describes his new series as a collaboration with his late father — an architect who left behind an array of unfinished drawings that Whyte is working to complete. His latest work includes expansive steel structures on exhibit at the Anat Ebgi Gallery in Los Angeles. These structures echo his father’s affinity for creating domestic spaces with centralized public yards, an idea rooted in the West African vernacular of communal, multipurpose spaces that were at once private and public. —Pierre-Antoine Louis

Cosmo Whyte | 5 L.A. Gallery Shows to Close out This Summer

We as a human people have a lot going on right now, including learning that today’s atmosphere (literal and not) is the legacy of a long, often painful past that needs unwinding, coaxing. L.A.-based Cosmo Whyte does his artist’s duty by translating that process across disparate physical mediums from charcoal to beaded curtains so heavy they can make visitors realize the reality of what they mean — sourcing his imagery all the while from historic events and family archives alike. Neon lights repeating “don’t behave like the men who brought you here” could reasonably haunt anybody reading them. —Vittoria Benzine

Gallery Moves: Making Melrose Hill Happen

NOW: Cosmo Whyte: Hush Now, Don’t Explain is on view through September 9.As an artist, Whyte’s interests in the energy, legacy, and conceptual framework, but also the literal actions of “the archive” have inspired him to explore myriad facets that intersect across his personal history and geopolitical circumstances. NEXT: Ming Ying opens September 23 – October 4. The U.S. debut of the Chinese-born, London-based painter will explore her evolving techniques with heavy impasto oil paint, to create romantic and psychedelic scenes of desire. —Shana Nys Dambrot

In His Downtown L.A. Studio, Artist Cosmo Whyte Works Nights Surrounded by Books, Beads, and Two Taxidermied Roosters

Scouring archives of institutions large and small, Whyte seeks out captivating photographs, usually depicting African diasporic history, particularly that of the Caribbean. These photographs serve as the basis for his wide-ranging artistic interventions. “Hush Now, Don’t Explain,” the artist’s second solo exhibition at Anat Ebgi in Los Angeles, brings together his most recent explorations. —Katie White

In artist Cosmo Whyte’s hands, metal beaded curtains become sites of “archival explorations”

Whyte regards this show as being in conversation with his previous exhibitions, which have centered on themes of immigration, colonialism and civil disobedience, with Black figures depicted in scenes of protest, pageantry and solemnity. — Leigh-Ann Jackson

Cosmo Whyte | Forecast Form: Art in the Caribbean Diaspora, 1990s–Today

In Beyond the Boundary, 2022, Jamaican artist Cosmo Whyte memorializes the West Indies’ five consecutive cricket victories against the English in 1984 by printing a photograph of a jubilant crowd holding a sign reading BLACK WASH onto a heavy nickel-plated steel-bead curtain in the entryway between two galleries. — Daniel R. Quiles

At the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, a Moving Investigation of Art From the Caribbean Diaspora

The exhibition gathers the works of 37 artists and features five new commissions. —Cassandra Pinto

Annotating History, A Conversation with Cosmo Whyte and Marlon James

Marlon James, the prizewinning author of A Brief History of Seven Killings, talks with artist Cosmo Whyte on the narrative of exile, the danger in a single story, and the meaning of masquerade. —Njelle Hamilton

Cosmo Whyte at Anat Ebgi

Moving through the beaded partition, viewers activate this static historical image, a gesture of pixelation and deconstruction, implicating the audience as more than mere spectators—a strategy that underscores Whyte’s artistic practice.

Cosmo Whyte’s Textured Response to a Year of Racial Upheaval

The Jamaican-born artist's Los Angeles exhibition draws on carnival and the Civil Rights Movement to create a patchwork of painting, sculpture and installation that's as commemorative as it is expressive. — Ravi Ghosh

Pick of the Week: Cosmo Whyte

Nothing is just one thing. This is a sentiment that many of us here in the United States, particularly those of us with privilege, are coming to terms with in an entirely new way. This lesson is reinforced in Cosmo Whyte’s show “When They Aren’t Looking We Gather by the River,” on view at Anat Ebgi. — Cole Sweetwood

Cosmo Whyte | Los Angeles Art Guide for December 2020

In Cosmo Whyte’s stirring, first solo exhibition with the gallery, he makes connections between contemporary Black Lives Matter protests, Black Civil Rights movements in the 1960s, and African-Caribbean protests in 1980s London. — Elisa Wouk Almino

The migrant’s journey: Artist Cosmo Whyte forges a new identity in a new land

“I hope to create interest in a larger conversation on immigration and certainly the notion of identity. The identity you had in your home country is not who you will be in your host country.” —Cosmo Whyte

San Diego Weekend Arts Events: Cosmo Whyte And Beliz Iristay

There's a mundane element in his work: an object from a home, something everyday or kitschy obscured by repetition or the way it's linked with other elements in a piece. —Julia Dixon Evans

Featured Peacemaker: Cosmo Whyte

"We have to think beyond the system that we're living in." —Cosmo Whyte

Cosmo Whyte: Mining the Body for Gold

"It varies depending on where you are and how you position yourself, but I’ve always been fascinated with how the “formerly colonized” navigate spaces. As I matured into my own artistic practice, I kept that experience at the forefront." —Cosmo Whyte

Cosmo Whyte, Coming into Being and Disappearing

"This undermines how pervasive the reach of colonialism and its mindset is in our modern lives, and the ripple effects that afflict multiple generations. We are still in the wake of colonialism, and the need for decolonization in almost every facet of modern-day life, institutions, and self is urgent." —Cosmo Whyte

Review: In MOCA GA show, Cosmo Whyte displays breadth, and hints at what’s next

What for some might be a contrast between visual pleasure and aromatic displeasure will evoke feelings of home and pride for others. Ackee and saltfish is Jamaica’s national dish. Whyte intertwines its complex past and references the international exchange that led to its association with Jamaica. —TK Smith

“Home is Not a Place” at Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles

The works included in the exhibition celebrate the dissonance of loving the home they’ve found while championing, as Baldwin notes, “…the right to criticize her perpetually.”

Q&A | Artist: Cosmo Whyte

"I truly enjoy teaching and mentorship. It’s incredibly rewarding being part of the process of assisting young artists in finding their voices." —Cosmo Whyte

ECONOMIES OF EMPIRE AND THE PRECARITY OF MOBILITY ASHLEY RAGHUBIR ON COSMO WHYTE’S “SECTION 2: RED, GREEN, BLUE AND BLACK” FROM HIS SERIES “THE ENIGMA OF ARRIVAL IN 4 SECTIONS”

Whyte’s The Enigma of Arrival attends to the complexity of interweaved migration histories and the ever-changing complex subjectivities of those who move without claims to resolution or singularity. —Ashley Raghubir

Art review: Trauma of migration marks Cosmo Whyte’s solo show

Isolated on a large mass of white paper, Whyte’s figures rendered in velvety strokes of charcoal and often accented with swaths of gold leaf dissolve into a puddle or seem to turn away so quickly their features are lost in a blur. —Felicia Feaster

Critic’s Pick: Cosmo Whyte

Part celebration, part consternation, the exhibition is dazzling in its ability to render the emotional complexity of diaspora. Like the crier who both belongs to the village and is apart from it, Whyte proclaims the news of the day, even to what denies him community. —Katie Geha

A conversation with Atlanta-based artist Cosmo Whyte, a Hudgens Prize finalist

Having shown in Atlanta, Cape Town, South Africa, Miami, Paris and Kingston, among other places in 2016 alone, Whyte is still creating along his core themes of identity, the effects passed down through generations after colonization and the language of ritual. —Stephanie Dowda

Jamaica Report: A Biennial

Whyte makes drawings, photographs and mixed-media sculptures; here, his “Manifest Destiny, the Musical” (2017) features a life-size, wooden sculpture of a dreadlocked black man reaching down with both hands to hold his genitals — except that only an empty socket appears at the base of a missing phallus. —Edward M Gómez

Artadia’s 2016 Atlanta Award Winners Are Jiha Moon and Cosmo Whyte

Cosmo Whyte explores themes of immigration and colonialism in his trans-disciplinary work. Fuller spoke about how Whyte’s performance, drawing, and sculpture “unpack the complexities of growing up within colonialism and maintaining identity. It is both highly personal and specific to each of us.” —Angela Brown

Studio Visit with Cosmo Whyte

"My entire body of work deals with migration in some way or form, and I was just trying to find a new way of talking about migration that went beyond catchphrases like 'diaspora' or 'identity in flux.' I’m fascinated by this notion of plants that have been uprooted and deposited in other places in the world; they can mimic the movement of human bodies." —Cosmo Whyte

A Review of “Cosmo Whyte: Wake the Town and Tell the People”

In Whyte's practice, the essence of the refugee's experience is turned and twisted and examined via a sharp dovetailing of materials, forms and methods of making. Water is symbolic of death and renewal, and the oceans are the source of all life, as well as gateways of global transit and flight. —Clara DeGalan

For Boundary-Breaking Artists, Some Bonds Can’t Be Severed

Cosmo Whyte embodies the dilemma of an artist torn by two worlds in a series of photographs depicting a barefoot man in a Wall Street business suit overwhelmed by big, high-end, colorful ties practically choking his neck — a straightforward but bold metaphor. —Gary Tischler

/Dialogues: Forecast Form | Carla Acevedo-Yates in Conversation with Suchitra Mattai and Cosmo Whyte

April 2023

Cosmo Whyte: Studio Visit

June 2020