Myriam Cohenca is an Arab Jewish artist and peace activist whose work confronts political oppression and human rights struggles through dreamlike abstraction and poetic expression. Engaging deeply with themes of exile, displacement, and identity, she creates art that is deeply rooted in specific locations, often focusing on sites of trauma and personal significance.

While primarily a photographer, Cohenca has expanded her practice to include video, text, sound, performance, and art direction, creating immersive, multisensory experiences. Her work juxtaposes intimate, visceral moments with expansive views, reflecting the tension between personal grief and collective resilience. Recurring motifs—such as bodies, the sea, and elements of ritual—serve as symbolic anchors in her exploration of political and human rights issues.

Influenced by artists like Ana Mendieta and filmmakers such as Andrei Tarkovsky, she blends raw writing with filmmaking, transforming poetic texts into visual narratives. Recently, she has begun exploring sound, both through collaborations with sound artists and her own soundscapes, enriching the sensory depth of her work.

Her art is marked by a liminal quality, often capturing the fragile, in-between moments of dusk and dawn, mirroring her identities, political convictions, and inner world. Through her deep connection to place and poetic abstraction, she constructs a visual language that both reflects transitional spaces and imagines radical new ones.

Looking ahead, Cohenca is delving into her Arab Jewish heritage, particularly its ties to the Ottoman Empire, exploring the cultural, historical, and personal narratives that have shaped her family’s trajectory. Her work not only seeks to document, but to bear witness, resist erasure, and create alternative ways of seeing and remembering.