At the 36th São Paulo Bienal, Brendon Bell-Roberts speaks with Cozier about After the Appeal Will Be the Next Delivery, a work that layers sound, colour, and memory to explore Caribbean histories, celebration, and vigilance.
Installation view of After the Appeal Will Be the Next Delivery by Christopher Cozier at the 36th Bienal de São Paulo – Not All Travellers Walk Roads – Of Humanity as Practice © Levi Fanan / Fundação Bienal de São Paulo
In conversation with Brendon Bell-Roberts, Trinidadian artist Christopher Cozier reveals how familiar sounds and symbols become a reflective, immersive experience in his Bienal installation. Drawing on cricket commentary, Independence Day fireworks, birdsong, and Pan-African buntings, the work evokes the rhythms and contradictions of Caribbean life. Part playful, part contemplative, it captures joy and resilience while probing the legacies of colonialism, sovereignty, and the enduring human imagination.
Brendon Bell-Roberts: Your work combines cricket commentary, fireworks, and birdsong. How do these sounds interact within the piece?
Christopher Cozier: The soundscape is central—it’s almost like the heartbeat of the work. Cricket commentary connects me to childhood memories of listening to games on a transistor, where terms like “umpire” and “empire” seemed intertwined yet impossible to distinguish. Fireworks recall Independence celebrations in Trinidad—moments of collective joy—but juxtaposed with birdsong from my yard, the work balances public ritual and intimate domestic life. Layering these elements creates a rhythm that is at once festive, reflective, and slightly unsettling, echoing the Caribbean’s intertwined histories of joy, struggle, and ongoing negotiation with colonial and postcolonial legacies.
Christopher Cozier with his work After the Appeal Will Be the Next Delivery at the 36th Bienal de São Paulo – Not All Travellers Walk Roads – Of Humanity as Practice © Suzette Bell-Roberts
The buntings are festive at first glance, but there’s more beneath the surface. Can you elaborate?
They’re intentionally paradoxical. At first sight, they signal celebration—like Independence Day or carnival—but they never fully cohere. The colours reference the Pan-African flag, the Pan-Arab flag, and the Palestinian flag, suggesting solidarity, revolution, and ongoing struggles for sovereignty. The buntings float, fragment, and drift, much like the Caribbean itself: a space of joy but also of persistent tension. This duality is central—the piece captures how celebrations in the Caribbean are never purely about festivity; they carry memory, awareness, and sometimes unease, reflecting cycles of liberation and constraint.
Cricket plays a symbolic role in your work. Why this sport?
Cricket is deeply layered culturally and politically. For those of us from the Commonwealth, its language and rituals are coded with history. As a child, I didn’t understand the difference between “umpire” and “empire,” and that confusion has stayed with me—it represents how games and governance, leisure and power, are intertwined. The act of appealing, which is central in the commentary fragment, becomes a metaphor for constant negotiation, vigilance, and challenge. Cricket embodies rules, hierarchy, and ritual, but it’s also playful—much like the Caribbean itself, where play, performance, and resilience coexist with colonial histories and social complexity.
Installation view of After the Appeal Will Be the Next Delivery by Christopher Cozier at the 36th Bienal de São Paulo – Not All Travellers Walk Roads – Of Humanity as Practice © Suzette Bell-Roberts
You speak about the Caribbean as a “sanctuary of the human imagination.” How does that inform this work?
The Caribbean has historically produced thinkers, writers, and revolutionaries—Padmore, C.L.R. James, and countless others—who grappled with what it means to be human under extreme conditions: from slavery to property to citizenship. This perspective informs my work profoundly. I see that After the Appeal Will Be the Next Delivery reflects that duality: a space where joy and vigilance coexist, where music and play are entwined with awareness of history, power, and resistance. The piece celebrates creativity and imagination, but it also asks us to reflect on turbulence, injustice, and the ongoing cycles of global inequality. It’s playful and poetic, but it’s also grounded in historical consciousness.
The installation was mainly made by hand under tight deadlines. How did that process affect the final piece?
Making this by hand was incredibly important—it connected me to the materiality of the work in a way that resonates with the Caribbean tradition of carnival. I cut, assembled, and numbered each triangular flag by hand, with support from a young assistant from the neighbourhood. The process was meticulous, almost like writing letters to someone, and it required thinking spatially, about how each piece occupies its position in the installation. Using simple materials—paper, string, sticks—reflects Caribbean resourcefulness and how communities create exuberant, transformative spaces with limited means. That hands-on approach gave the piece a personal rhythm, a tactile intimacy that digital processes could not replicate.
Installation view of After the Appeal Will Be the Next Delivery by Christopher Cozier at the 36th Bienal de São Paulo – Not All Travellers Walk Roads – Of Humanity as Practice © Suzette Bell-Roberts
How does your piece relate to the Bienal’s theme of estuaries and shared life?
I see the Caribbean itself as a metaphorical estuary—a place where cultures, histories, ideas, and people converge. The flags, the soundscape, the fragmentation of the work—all of it floats in that space, suggesting both turbulence and flow. There’s a cycle of destruction and renewal, joy and vigilance, which mirrors global dynamics and the Caribbean’s own historical experience. It’s playful, expansive, and collaborative, but it also insists on reflection, asking viewers to consider how celebration, memory, and resistance coexist. In this sense, the work embodies humanity as a verb: it is enacted through rhythm, sound, and gesture, constantly negotiating presence and imagination.
Christopher Cozier’s presentation, After the Appeal Will Be the Next Delivery, is on view at the 36th São Paulo Bienal until 11 January 2026. For more information, visit 36.bienal.org.br.
