Shira Cohen (°1971, Tel Aviv, Israel) makes installations, media art and mixed media artworks. By applying a poetic and often metaphorical language, Cohen creates work through labour-intensive processes which can be seen explicitly as a personal exorcism ritual. They are inspired by a nineteenth-century tradition of works, in which an ideal of ‘Fulfilled Absence’ was seen as the pinnacle.
Her work urge us to renegotiate installation art as being part of a reactive or – at times – autistic medium, commenting on oppressing themes in our contemporary society. By referencing romanticism, grand-guignolesque black humour and symbolism, she wants to amplify the astonishment of the spectator by creating compositions or settings that generate tranquil poetic images that leave traces and balances on the edge of recognition and alienation.
Her works are often classified as part of the new romantic movement because of the desire for the local in the unfolding globalized world. However, this reference is not intentional, as this kind of art is part of the collective memory. By rejecting an objective truth and global cultural narratives, she creates with daily, recognizable elements, an unprecedented situation in which the viewer is confronted with the conditioning of his own perception and has to reconsider his biased position.
Her works appear as dreamlike images in which fiction and reality meet, well-known tropes merge, meanings shift, past and present fuse. Time and memory always play a key role. Shira Cohen currently lives and works in Haifa.
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