In Conversation : Zoe Cohen

Zoe Cohen received her BA from Haverford College (PA) and her MFA from Brooklyn College (NY). Since 2006 she has been based in West Philadelphia, and her multi-disciplinary works and public projects have been exhibited widely on the East Coast. Fellow artist Douglas Witmer interviewed Cohen in January 2012 for the Museum of Art and Peace in conjunction with her exhibition “What Was Our Vision.”

Douglas Witmer: You seem to take approaches with your work that allow you to move freely between and across certain kinds of boundaries or definitions.  How aware are you of those boundaries when you are beginning work?  Is it something you set out to highlight or address?  What do you learn in the process?

Zoe Cohen: In general I’m really interested in making work that connects material and content, or crosses the boundary between what is being depicted and what I’m depicting it with. So I’ve drawn images of lactation glands using human breastmilk for example. I don’t want there to be an abstracted disconnect between what I am referring to visually, and what I am using to refer to it. The What Was Our Vision series is actually an exception to this approach. I’m using traditional art materials here. But I still feels it’s a process of collecting or indexing.

I generally do start a project with a clear idea of the concept and approach. The actual image-making is usually more improvisational once I’ve determined the meaning and message that I want the materials and imagery sources to convey. When I’m starting a project, I don’t tend to ask myself “what boundaries will I cross with this project?” but rather I consider what connections I want to make, what meanings I want to exist inherently in the work based on the materials, the process, or the source imagery.

DW: You have written, quite beautifully, I think: “I am bound by conscience and conviction to extend my reach beyond art worlds, and into the wider world that is already art.” Describe some of the approaches you have taken in this regard. Where do you find that which is “already art” for you?
 

ZC: You know, it’s interesting – I wrote that part of my artist’s statement in reference to the public participatory projects I have done. But now that you ask me about this idea in the context of having just made the wall drawing, I’m realizing it’s true about most of my other work as well.

The participatory projects I have created (The Listening Station, Show Someone How You Feel About Something, and Drawing Water) have all been based on the desire to both isolate and elevate everyday interactions into something more meaningful, and to bring awareness to the creative potential inherent in everyone. So, the act of listening, of communicating by making a drawing or sending a letter in the mail, the process of pulling a bucket of water out of a river, are all things that I have simply pointed to as “already art” by designing public activities around them. I do love my role as artist in these projects, the process of developing the idea, designing the way in which participants will be engaged, but in some ways it’s more of a curatorial role. I am pointing to something that I think is important but letting the participants determine the content.

As I said, I’m also noticing how this idea comes into my other work, the work I consider more “traditional” or at least more studio-based. I usually work from source imagery that is taken from other pre-existing symbol systems or natural forms. Again, I feel that I am choosing and selecting from someting that already exists, and showing how it is meaningful or important. The source imagery for the What Was Our Vision series, and for the wall drawing, comes directly from Ancient Near Eastern art. I’ve selected symbols and patterns that feel interesting and important to me, and use them to express something more contemporary. Other recent and current work is based on magnified images of cells, of body tissues, or micro-organisms. The images already existed in the world as art, either as sacred or profane imagery, or as naturally occurring beautiful forms, and I am reaching into that world to create my art.

DW: How do artmaking and peacemaking intersect for you?

ZC: I consider most of my work to be of creating the world I want to see. I also connect a lot of my work with the Jewish concept of Tikkun Olam ( repairing the world). Tikkun Olam is based in the Jewish mystical idea that the world was created purposefully incomplete or flawed, and that humans were put on the earth to complete the act of creation. So while I often feel that am trying to “repair” some of the damage we have done ourselves, I am also simply fulfilling the role of being fully human, by creating.

I want to live in a world where people interact meaningfully in public spaces, where we send each other drawings, where we recognize the beauty of the natural world, where we understand and mediate the impact we have on the environment, where we feel connected to each other and the land we live on and from. I want to live in a world where we can draw new conclusions from ancient texts and images in order to learn from our past and create a more vibrant future. Most of all I want everyone to know that human connection and creativity is available to them at any time. Creating situations for people to experience this truth is the basis of my work.