The Sea Urchin Can't Swim: Tales from the Edge of the World: Cosmo Whyte

4 October - 23 November 2024

The Sea Urchin Can't Swim: Tales from the Edge of a World
Cosmo Whyte
Johnson Lowe Gallery is pleased to present our inaugural solo exhibition of Cosmo Whyte. Opening on October 4th, with a reception from 6-9 pm, and coinciding with the Atlanta Art Fair and Atlanta Art Week, Cosmo Whyte's The Sea Urchin Can't Swim: Tales from the Edge of a World, marks his first presentations with the gallery.

In The Sea Urchin Can't Swim: Tales from the Edge of a World, Los Angeles based artist Cosmo Whyte continues his explorations of race, nationalism, and displacement in what ostensibly culminates in a presentation of land and seascapes. Drawing from his archives of personal migration, Caribbean folklore, and historical photographs related to water practices spanning from the 1930’s to the present, Through a diverse array of media, encompassing drawings, photography, sculpture, and installation, Whyte articulates the dialectical tensions between the foreign and the domestic, mirroring the liminal spaces of migration and the perpetual evolution of identity formation.
Encompassing the entire span of a wall in the central gallery, a photo-based installation depicts a faintly featured, near-silhouetted Black figure swimming beneath the crossbeams of a glass-bottom boat, a tourist attraction first introduced in the Caribbean during the 1900s for observing marine life, coral reefs, and shipwrecks. What is at play in this eerily ambiguous, yet heroic photograph is Whyte’s careful consideration of perspective as a means of situating the viewer—not just as a voyeur, but as an active participant in the dynamics at work within the installation. To stand before the piece is to embody the very Western gaze Whyte has long interrogated, while simultaneously basking in the agency imparted by the figure’s unyielding presence.
(Larger version of this image opens in a popup).

(Larger version of this image opens in a popup).

(Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
In Cosomo's Permutations Series: Permutations 1: Terra Incognita, figures blur and dissolve, reflecting the fluidity of cultural identity within contested spaces like Caribean Carnival. Like Gilroy’s notion of “politics on a lower frequency,” Whyte’s imagery suggests that beneath the surface, there is an undercurrent of quiet resistance—a persistent assertion of identity that resists simplification. The layering of photographs and drawings becomes an act of safeguarding both memory and the diasporic body, challenging viewers to navigate the tension between visibility and concealment. Each line, photograph, and obscured detail reflects the constant negotiation of identities across time and space, where histories are both fluid and deeply rooted.
Cosmo Whyte, Permutation 1: Terra Incognita, 2024
Cosmo Whyte’s Permutations marks a pivotal moment in his practice, as he integrates photographs into his large-scale charcoal drawings for the first time, layering elements that explore the fragile boundaries of identity and history. In Permutations 2: Saturated Soil, the juxtaposition of meticulously drawn figures and photographic fragments reveals the tension between containment and inevitability—sandbags and tarps symbolize attempts to hold back the forces of migration and displacement.
Permutation 2: Saturated Soil, 2024
Flags of Convenience

In Flags of Convenience, Cosmo Whyte examines the layered issues of sovereignty, access, and the lingering legacies of colonialism that permeate the Caribbean. Composed of draped, overlapping images suspended from steel bars and hooks, the piece is a vivid meditation on the controversial maritime practice of “flags of convenience” (FOC). The images drawn from archival photographs of Caribbean water practices, juxtaposing the beauty and resilience of Caribbean life against the exploitative mechanisms of global maritime commerce. The FOC concept—a practice where ships fly the flags of nations other than their own, sidestepping regulations, labor laws, and national accountability—serves as a metaphor for the fractured identities imposed upon former colonies.

Here, Whyte exposes the FOC as more than a legal loophole; it is a tool of neocolonial power that permits the circumvention of sovereignty, reducing nations to convenient facades for the profit of foreign entities. By assembling these images within a fragmented, almost spectral arrangement, Whyte captures the tension between national identity and global exploitation.
- Cosmo Whyte, Codex, 2024
- Cosmo Whyte, Conjoined Meerschaum Pipe, 2024
Cosmo Whyte’s annotated schematics of Meerschaum pipes in Codex and Conjoined Meerschaum with encrypted annotations (2024) are drawn with precise charcoal strokes punctuated by blood-red lines and cryptic lettering, manifest as a complex merging of archival folklore with a historical examination of maritime conquest. These traditionally white clay pipes were first produced in England during the late 16th century after the introduction of tobacco from the American colonies and Caribbean Islands. The figure, rendered as an inverted male bust with full, natural hair cascading in rich waves denies immediate recognition. This inversion is deliberate; it subverts the viewers expectation, creating a disorienting effect that unsettles the familiar. By positioning the head upside down, Whyte interweaves the identity of the pipe—a symbol of colonial leisure—with the semblance of a human form, thus blurring the boundary between object and subject, artifact and identity. This unexpected twist reclaims the pipe from its passive, decorative role, reassigning it a voice that speaks to the buried histories of individuals rendered silent by imperial narratives.
Jamaican Blue Soap

Inspired by a Caribbean cleansing recipe involving Jamaican blue soap—a practice steeped in the Caribbean’s spiritual traditions—Whyte layers a newly minted series of twenty Soap Sculptures made from the soap with coded references to both the intangible heritage of cultural practices and the indelible scars of imperialism. The blue soap, a mainstay in Caribbean, symbolizes not only purification but also protection, a bulwark against negative forces. In Whyte’s hands, it becomes more than an emblem of cultural ritual; it serves as a material and metaphorical conduit through which he delves into the unseen, less rigid archives of cultural memory. Whyte's reframing of folkloric symbols within the weighty discourse of historical reckoning foregrounds the potency of historial consciousness, questioning whose histories are preserved, sanitized, and codified—and whose persist only in folklore and ritual.
Cosmo Whyte (b. 1982, St. Andrew, Jamaica) employs drawing, sculpture, and photography to explore the intersections of race, nationalism, and displacement. His large scale drawings pose the celebratory body of Jamaican and diasporic communities in states of jubilation. His figures, adorned with gold leaf and black glitter, defy their colonial past, tearing it from their bodies through unbridled dance.

Whyte received a BFA from Bennington College, a post-baccalaureate at Maryland Institute College of Art, and a MFA from University of Michigan. In 2020 he had solo exhibitions at MOCA Georgia and ICA San Diego. Whyte has exhibited in biennial exhibitions including Prospect.5 New Orleans (2022) 13th Havana Biennial, the Jamaica Biennial (2017), and the Atlanta Biennial (2016). His work has been included in exhibitions at Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL; The High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA; The Drawing Center, New York, NY; The Somerset House, London, UK; Museum of Latin American Art, Los Angeles, CA; Atlanta Contemporary, Atlanta, GA; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France; and the National Gallery of Jamaica, Kingston, Jamaica. His work is in public museum collections including the High Museum, Atlanta; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL; International African American Museum, Charlotte, NC; Museum of Contemporary Art Georgia; National Gallery of Jamaica; and the Pérez Art Museum Miami. In 2022 he joined the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture as an assistant professor. Whyte lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.