Andrew Carenza
Can a human be feral? We mostly think of “feral” as existing in a sort of liminal space between “wild” and “domestic,” in close proximity to but never completely within one realm or the other. Ferality connotes a sense of liberation or freedom from authority, but it also suggests a certain vulnerability; a feral existence is also a precarious one. In his book Nature’s Wild, Andil Gosine refuses heteropatriarchal investment in a human-animal binary by calling for a reclamation of our animality, challenging the “civilizing” project of colonialism in solidarity with the other beings with whom we share this planet in crisis. “Feral,” in his view, describes ways of being for queer and marginalized persons of color who do not conform to European modes of civility and domesticity. Despite the overwhelming pressure to prove themselves human, not animal, many on the margins have managed to carve out “feral” existences, within and yet in retaliation to a heteronormative and white supremacist dominant society.
While contemplating this tension between civility and wildness, Gosine found himself a unique alter ego: a feral rooster, given the name “Carlitos” by his human companions, living apart from the other chickens near the Medulla Art Gallery in Port of Spain, Trinidad. Drawn to the bird’s confidence, ornate plumage, and flamboyant strut, in Carlitos, Gosine saw a mirror for the queer experience of ferality. They were neither a domesticated rooster—for example, the property of human farmers—nor a “wild” junglefowl living apart from civilization among their own species. Instead, Carlitos, like many on the margins of a dominant culture, found their own way of existing somewhere in the liminal space between, at once uninhibited by the pressures of domesticity, yet always at the mercy of the dangers presented by living such a precarious life in its shadows.
The two figures, Gosine and Carlitos, appear together in London, Ontario-based artist and poet Angie Quick’s majestic eight-by-four-foot oil painting and diptych Carlitos’ Way (2023), whimsically titled by Gosine after the 1993 gangster film of the same name. Quick and Gosine became friends upon a fortuitous meeting at Gosine’s exhibition Coolie Coolie Viens at London’s McIntosh Gallery. Parallel interests with Gosine made Quick the ideal collaborator for a painting engaging Nature’s Wild and his relationship to Carlitos the rooster. From preliminary discussions to a resulting series of fifty watercolor explorations, the entrancing Carlitos’ Way was conceived. During the exploration process, the two established a visual framework that would be carried through to the final piece. First, the palette would consist of a monochrome, sallow green—a departure from the generally full-color pastels of Quick’s work. Described by Quick as “oceanic” and “radioactive,” the painting’s neon lens situates it in an eerie, post-apocalyptic netherworld. The familiarity of the domestic setting and characters portrayed creates a tension between palette and form. Through color, a suggested parallel universe, or “upside down” of our own world, becomes a transitional/liminal and intimate space in which our human and more-than-human protagonists can come into conversation with one another.
Carlitos’ Way (2023). Angie Quick. 8’ x 4’
A second aspect of the visual framework was the diptych composition itself, with Gosine and Carlitos each situated within individual portraits, allowing them to be seen both together and apart. Gosine stands to the left, naked and vulnerable, the bottom edge of the frame barely cropped above his waist. His body appears timid, with his head tilted and chest caved, unsure of himself in this neon-tinted world. To the right, Carlitos appears, in art as in life, perhaps as a mirror reflection of Gosine. Yet here, they are simply carrying on with their avian ways. The viewer may be taken aback when they suddenly process that the live rooster is not only indoors, but ironically perched upon a dining table. Tailfeathers to the sky, they appear to sassily declare “kiss my ass” to the meek human being with whom they share the room.
Throughout the landscape, the more-than-human manages to pour in, infiltrating the ornately decorated living space, harkening to earlier days of European colonialism in the Caribbean and around the world. If, as Quick suggests, “so much of art history is painting the rooms that [the viewer] will never experience,” then the feral nonhuman challenges this elitist boundary here. Bold brushstrokes meld to form a plethora of floral life, encroaching through an open window and dominating the surface of the central table. They bleed seamlessly across the diptych’s literal divide between human and animal, altogether obscuring the vertical line into irrelevancy.
While Quick’s expressive brushstrokes blur the boundaries between indoor and outdoor, domestic and wild, they also visibly pull the human figure into the foreground. In a departure from some of her other works, in which human figures seep and blend into their surroundings, Gosine’s figure is certainly more in focus. He is a pillar, somewhat awkwardly juxtaposed against the partly obscured interior. The figure’s stillness accentuates his somber demeanor, as if he is not completely at home in this universe of Quick’s imagination. The frame’s cropping just below the waist barely hides the figure’s sexuality, creating a heightened sense of vulnerability. In contrast, Carlitos appears seemingly at ease, as painterly texture effortlessly integrates the nonhuman animal into their world, positioning them as the more self-assured party in the room.
Yet in spite of whatever distance is implied to exist between them, it is the central, round table that creates a sense of intimacy between the two beings. Quick leverages the table as a meeting place, layered chaotically in floral ornament, bringing the human and their fractured sense of wildness back into conversation with their more-than-human counterpart. The queerness of this other world becomes evident then—a space simultaneously marked by the familiarity of a heteronormative domicile, unexpectedly exposed as a mere social facade by the intrusion of the feral animal, who humbly reminds us of our own precarity on a planet in crisis.
Finally, one of the piece’s defining visual elements—the jarring smile, painted as a crisp and glowing line overtop Gosine’s somber facial expression—was one of Quick’s signature additions. Having been provided with photographs to draw inspiration from, Quick was surprised by the solemn portraits of Gosine, feeling they did not reflect his confidence nor his exuberant personality. Accompanied by a matching pair of piercing neon eyes, gazing off into an unseen distance, the superimposed features add a menacing quality to the otherwise serene portraits. The eyes, like the smile, succeed in being at once unsettling and endearing. In Quick’s words, the addition of the synthetic smile signifies the “expectations that are pressed on queer [and other marginalized] people to put on a smile.” With this reading, the luminous smile and eyes become mask-like concealers of their wearer’s pain. Above Gosine’s shoulder, a portrait within the portrait hangs from the wall—its two embracing subjects donning the very same smiles as Gosine. Does this couple embody the “human” domestic norm to which we are meant to aspire? As Quick suggests, it is the pressures of conformity and its associated pain that queer people are made to mask with a smile.
What else then becomes hidden in this masquerading process? Is it queer and marginalized peoples’ sexualities and self-expression, deemed too “wild,” too “animal” to be accepted into the superior category of “the human”? Perhaps this is what Gosine’s figure is beginning to unlearn as he enters this feral space in which the tension between what is wild and domestic can be negotiated and ultimately challenged. Perhaps it is telling that the electrifying smile was only painted overtop the face of the human figure: Carlitos has no need for a similarly crafted and artificial expression. For a feral “gay rooster,” unlike a racialized, queer human, is unburdened by any “civilizing” discourse. At peace with their ferality, Carlitos confidently and promiscuously traverses spaces that have been deemed either “domestic” or “wild” by the same humans that seek to distance themselves from their animality. Together, Gosine and Quick imagine a world in which the feral can be engaged, not as an end-all solution or alternative to colonialism’s human-animal binary, but still a disruption to its centuries-old authority. Maybe this very disruption is the lesson we can learn from Carlitos’ ways.
