Born in 1982.
He lives and works between Atlanta (USA) and Montego Bay (Jamaica)
« The existence of a nation does not necessarily imply the unanimity of its nationals around a given project at a given time », said Édouard Glissant. It is the poets of the resistance who inspire Cosmo Whyte’s work.
Multidisciplinarity then becomes for the artist a means of exploring identities, of taking account of what they are, thus, shaken by history, migrations and transitory. Cosmo Whyte blurs the boundaries of his practicies, which gives birth to these strange and fleeting forms, these bodies almost disappearing a way of giving an account of this resistance to the western light and its universe. The artist speaks about this magnificent but difficult dialogue between civilizations and their heritages. The idea is not to assert, but to give free rein to reflection in order to shake up the interiority. Art becomes the way to remember and to anchor negritude as a commitment to Black identity.
In 2021, Cosmo Whyte is selected for Prospect 5, in New Orleans (USA). He has participated in numerous exhibitions: Beneath Its Tongue, the Fish Rolls the Hook to Sharpen Its Cadence, Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia, Atlanta (2019); Get Up Stand Up The Summerset House, London, UK (2019); Intermittent Rivers, 13th Havana Biennial Matanzas, Cuba (2019); “Of Drawings and Belonging” at the High Museum, Atlanta (2019); the Jamaica Biennale (2017) and the Atlanta Biennale, Atlanta Contemporary (2016).
He has received the Art Matters Prize, the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Prize, the Working Artist Award, the Drawing Center Open Sessions Fellowship, the Artadia Prize, The Drawing Center’s Open Sessions Fellowship, the Edge Prize…