In his poem The Plural of Me, Colin Robinson gave instructions for after his death.
In one stanza, he said he wanted people to remember him however they wanted, and that he wanted his ashes to be placed in little boxes, “like wedding cake,” to be shared among his friends, family and lovers for them to do as they wished with his remains.
Robinson, a poet, LGBTQIA activist, founder of the Coalition Advocating for Sexual Inclusion (Caiso): Sex and Gender Justice and Sunday Newsday columnist, died of colon cancer in March 2021 in Washington, DC. He was 58.
Curated by Dr Andil Gosine, The Plural of He is an exhibition exploring Robinson's life and work at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, New York, from March 15-July 21. Its name is a direct reference to Robinson’s poem.
[caption id="attachment_1064473" align="alignnone" width="614"] A cover image of a new novella by Colin Robinson that will be published for the show. The artwork was created by visual artist Devan Shimoyama. Photos courtesy Andil Gosine. -[/caption]
Gosine told Sunday Newsday because Robinson had colon cancer (which he wrote about candidly in several of his columns), he was aware of his time passing and had thought about his legacy. Gosine told him about the idea of an exhibition around Robinson’s work, and he was excited about it. But they had only barely discussed the idea.
The men had a good professional relationship. They kept in touch and would consult each other on various projects. There was even a chapter about Robinson, detailing his activism, in Gosine’s book Nature's Wild: Love, Sex, and Law in the Caribbean, which Robinson was able to read before he died.
Gosine was surprised to learn he had been made Robinson’s literary executor and custodian of his archives, which made him feel more certain about doing an exhibition.
He went to Robinson’s sister’s house in Washington to find about 80 boxes of material stored in her garage. Most of these documents and objects were accumulated from the time Robinson lived in New York, from 1980- 2006.
Gosine organised and re-packed much of them and shipped them to New York where he went through the material in more detail, and started talking to artists he thought would fit the exhibition.
“It was important to me to not just have Trinidadians, because his influence was broader than that, but it was important to me that it be a show of Caribbean artists.”
[caption id="attachment_1064474" align="alignnone" width="1024"] The costume, Great Bernadine Royal Cobo of the Caribbean by Natalie Wood. -[/caption]
In the end he chose seven artists. They included contemporary African-American visual artist Devan Shimoyama, who has Trinidad and Tobago heritage; Natalie Wood, who grew up in Trinidad around the same time as Robinson and shared his passion for Carnival; Jamaican multimedia artist Leasho Johnson, who was familiar with Robinson’s advocacy work in the Caribbean; Barbadian Ada Patterson, who uses filmmaking and video installation; and Barbados-born, New York-raised mixed media artist Lla
