Artist Andil Gosine would be setting up his exhibition Nature’s Wild with Andil Gosine in Washington, DC this week if the Art Museum of the Americas, an arm of the Organization of American States (OAS), hadn’t canceled it earlier this month.
“For three years, I have imagined every centimeter of the three galleries for this work,” Gosine told Hyperallergic in a phone interview. “The work was made for that space.”
The news of Gosine’s exhibition cancellation came days before curator Cheryl D. Edwards was similarly notified that the museum terminated her planned show of works by African-descended Caribbean and American artists at the request of the Trump administration, which considered it a “DEI program and event.”
After Hyperallergic broke the news earlier this week that the Art Museum of the Americas had cancelled Edwards’s Before The Americas, the Washington Post reported that the institution had also nixed Nature’s Wild with Andil Gosine. The solo show, organized in collaboration with a dozen other artists and several writers, was adapted from Gosine’s 2021 book Nature’s Wild: Love, Sex and Law in the Caribbean, exploring art, activism, and homosexuality in the region.
Like Edwards’s exhibition, Gosine’s show was scheduled to open on March 21. But unlike Edwards, who said her show was canceled because of anti-DEI measures, Gosine said he wasn’t given a reason for why his show was axed. In Edwards’s case, emails reviewed by Hyperallergic suggested that the United States government had withdrawn principal funding for the exhibition. When Edwards offered to fundraise on her own to keep the exhibition open, the museum declined, she claims.
But Gosine, who was raised in Trinidad and lives in Canada, told Hyperallergic that no funds for his exhibition came from the US government, and he remains in the dark as to why his show was canceled.
He was told only that the General Secretariat of the OAS (a diplomatic association dedicated to human rights, security, and development in the Western Hemisphere) had ordered his exhibition canceled. Gosine told Hyperallergic that the museum had branded it as a “queer show.”
The Art Museum of the Americas and the Permanent Mission of Canada to the OAS have not responded to Hyperallergic’s request for comment.
“I’ve never characterized my show as a ‘queer show,’” Gosine said. “You won’t find identity markers in any of the kind of text I’ve written [for this exhibition].”
Expenses for the show were funded by grants Gosine himself had won, the organization WorldPride, and the Canadian permanent mission to the OAS.
In a letter dated February 14, Art Museum of the Americas Executive Director Adriana Ospina wrote to Gosine that the museum had “made the difficult decision to indefinitely suspend all temporary traveling on-site exhibitions,” without providing additional details.
“Because we recognize the importance and value of the Nature’s Wild project, we understand and share your frustration at the challenges presented now,” Ospina wrote.
The centerpiece of Gosine’s show is a photograph taken of him in rural Trinidad when he was three years old. In the image, Gosine wears all blue and has his hands on his hips, but has altered his shoes to sparkle. “I’m a little boy, in a queer pose with sparkling shoes,” he said.
The exhibition, he said, used visual art to explore connections between environmental justice, sexuality, and sexual justice.
Gosine, who is a professor of Environmental Arts and Justice at York University in Toronto, said he took a 15% salary cut from his job to organize the exhibition and spent six months of his residency at the Clark Art Institute developing the catalogue.
He thinks the cancellation could be part of the museum’s efforts to survive the Trump administration’s updated priorities for US foreign diplomacy. These include vows to “combat genuine enemy propaganda with the fundamental truth that America is a great and just country whose people are generous.”
President Trump has named former Conair executive Leandro Rizzuto Jr. to be the US ambassador to the OAS, pending Senate confirmation. He has also expressed interest in seizing control of arts institutions, recently appointing himself as chair of the Kennedy Center board and declaring in a Truth Social post a “golden age of arts and culture,” which includes no drag shows or “anti-American propaganda.”
The United States is the OAS’s top donor of special contributions, according to the institution’s financial records. In 2023, the United States contributed $38.4 million to that fund.
“This is an anticipatory move,” Gosine said, pointing to President Trump’s February 12 executive order for Secretary of State Marco Rubio to align foreign policy compliance with the “America First” agenda.
“I fear, at this moment, that means throwing queer people, queer artists, marginal people, under the bus,” Gosine said.
Canadian cultural critic Deborah Root, who collaborated with Gosine on the exhibition, told Hyperallergic she was concerned with how quickly it was canceled without discussion.
“My primary emotion is anger — and disbelief,” Root told Hyperallergic in an email. “I am concerned that this sort of thing will have a chilling effect on other artists and writers, some of whom might be tempted, if they hope to be shown, to tailor their work to fit the new, conservative and ultimately boring model.”
Canadian artist Angie Quick, whose work would have been shown in Gosine’s exhibition, told Hyperallergic that art should give power to those facing erasure.
“It is an act of violence to see LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC groups, as always, be the first targeted in an aggressive attempt to erase and suppress,” Quick said via email. “We are moving on with greater resolve and emboldened with the power to not be defeated.”
Another participating artist, Kelly Sinnapah Mary, called the cancellation a “terrible loss.”
Gosine said the art community has since stepped up to support him, and that he has plans to show the works at various galleries. However, a comparable museum exhibition is no longer possible given the three- to five-year planning timeline these institutions require.
“I hope there’ll be more of the private art world stepping up when public institutions cancel artist shows,” Gosine said.
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