Andil Gosine

Andil Gosine is a Trinidad-born artist, curator, and academic. He moved to Canada as a teenager and has since lived in France, the United Kingdom and the United States. A Commonwealth Scholar and a Getty Scholar, Dr. Gosine completed his PhD in Environmental Studies and became a professor at York University. His first solo-authored book Nature's Wild deals with questions of sexuality, dehumanization, and human-animal relations in the Caribbean. While on fellowship at the Fashion Institute of Technology, he created WARDROBES, a series of art pieces that he later developed into performance art. He has curated several exhibitions, including "Everything Slackens in a Wreck" (2022), which featured Asian Caribbean artists. His "Nature's Wild" show was unexpectedly cancelled by the Art Museum of the Americas in 2025 at the beginning of Donald Trump's second presidency. Prior to his turn to art and art history, Dr. Gosine was a lead scholar in the fields of Sexuality Studies and International Development, and worked at the World Bank before becoming a Professor. His Master’s Thesis, « All the wrong places: looking for love in Third World Poverty, » became a significant influence on policy when it was subsequently published as « Sex for pleasure, rights to participation and alternatives to AIDS » in 2004. He also co-authored the groundbreaking 2008 book « Environmental Justice and Racism in Canada: An Introduction » as well as numerous essays in the fields.

Early life and education Gosine was born in 1973 in Trinidad and raised in the rural area of George Village, Tableland. His ancestors were Indian indentured laborers brought to Trinidad and Tobago to replace African slaves as cheap labor. As a teen he attended an all-boys Catholic school in San Fernando. After graduating, Gosine entered into a longterm relationship and travelled frequently to Paris to visit his boyfriend. Ed Broadbent encouraged him to become an NDP politician, but Gosine ultimately decided against it. In 2002, Gosine completed his PhD in sociology at York University with a dissertation about the French Green Party.

Career For two years, Gosine worked on LGBTQ policy at the World Bank, eventually returning to York University to serve as an assistant professor of sociology. At FIT, Gosine first worked on WARDROBES, several pieces related to clothing. He also serves on the editorial committee of the Small Axe journal.

WARDROBES (2011-2015) Initially, Gosine created WARDROBES as four objects: Cutlass, Orhni, Rum and Roti, and Scrubs. The objects symbolize both beauty and violence. In Cutlass and Ohrni, Gosine reproduced traditional Indo-Caribbean objects, calling them "as much markers of oppression as they are evidence of the creative agency of women who lived through miserable conditions". Gosine later developed WARDROBES into performance art: Cutlass, Orhni, Rum and Roti, and (Made in Love). Gosine took photos of Caribbean immigrants in New York in front of a picture of sugar cane fields. Afterwards, the subjects took their photos home.

Later that year, Gosine's collaborative show "Coolie Coolie Viens" opened at Western University. The title references “coolie, coolie, come for curry”, a derogatory chant directed at Indo–Trinidadians and Tobagonians. Another artwork was "Our Holy Waters, and Mine", video of a performance piece by Gosine in which he pours water into mason jars that are labeled with "kala pani" and the names of 12 bodies of water that Gosine's ancestors or Gosine himself travelled on.

"rêvenir" (2020) In February 2020, "rêvenir", Gosine's first show in the Caribbean opened in Trinidad. The show included a series of photographs of random objects that Gosine took while dating a closeted man who did not want his photo taken. Another piece, Stories, is a video of Gosine kissing a man while staring at the camera. That month, Gosine also published an essay about the end of a long-term relationship, due in part to his family's inability to accept his queerness.

Nature’s Wild: Love, Sex, and Law in the Caribbean (2021) In his book Nature’s Wild: Love, Sex, and Law in the Caribbean (2021), Gosine describes the impact of the colonial depiction of Caribbean people as animals and uncivilized, which seeks to distinguish between colonizer and colonized people. An article in n+1 summarized the book's premise as: "We are animals. So what?" The book was given the Duke University Press Scholars of Color First Book Award.

"Everything Slackens in a Wreck" (2022) In 2012, Gosine attended a Caribbean art exhibit in New York City. He noticed a lack of Indo-Caribbean representation, and it inspired him to curate his own exhibitions of Asian Caribbean art. For several years he worked on a project entitled Visual Arts After Indenture, researching artists descended from Asian-Caribbean indentured laborers.

"Everything Slackens in a Wreck" opened in 2022 at the Ford Foundation and featured art by Margaret Chen, Andrea Chung, Wendy Nanan, and Kelly Sinnapah Mary. Additionally, Gosine collaborated with the organization Jahajee Sisters on a sound installation featuring members talking about what brings them joy and comfort. The exhibit's title is from a poem by Khal Torabully, which Gosine interprets as "the kind of loosening that often accompanies disaster", noting that caste was abolished and gender roles evolved amid the suffering of Indian indentured laborers in the Caribbean.

"The Plural of He" (2024) In 2024, Gosine curated "The Plural of He", an exhibit about deceased queer activist Colin Robinson, at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art. Five artists, including Devan Shimoyama and Natalie Wood, completed a residency at the museum and created artwork inspired by material from Robinson's personal archives. Richard Fung also contributed to the show. The exhibit included essays by people who knew Robinson, including poet Shivanee Ramlochan.

"Nature's Wild" (2025) For three years, Gosine worked on a show called "Nature's Wild" at Art Museum of the Americas.

The museum, which is run by the Organization of American States, unexpectedly called off the show in February 2025 before it opened. The funding for "Nature's Wild" was not at risk because it was almost entirely funded by grants, Canada Council for the Arts, WorldPride, and the Canadian mission to the OAS.