Artist statement
Myriam Cohenca’s art is characterized by a tension between dreamlike atmospheres and immersion into materiality. Thinking about exile, displacement, memory, and identity, she explores the impacts of contemporary media, with a particular focus on the psychological mechanisms at work in the process of trauma.
She works predominantly in photography but also increasingly in video and digital manipulation. Collage is an important element of her work, whether it be in traditional paper-based compositions, digital collages, or an approach to creating photographs where the image appears through layering viewpoints, aided by reflections and mise en scene.
Both intuitive decisions and chance play a fundamental role in her creative process, opening up for ideas and imagery to be developed in the moment, led by a cumulative process of looking and adapting.
Cohenca uses familiar subject matter, including bodies, flowers, and waters, but the aesthetic tends towards abstraction and a feeling of transience. Materiality is always a presence within the work, for example, the grain within photographs or flaws in the print surface. This sensuality is continued within the content, seen in a smoky haze drifting across a face or a shadow of a fern grazing over a bare shoulder. A dichotomy of intimacy and expanse exists within her projects as they contrast close-up intimate shots of people with wide views of skylines glinting under the touch of the setting sun.
Initially inspired by the work of Man Ray, Dora Maar, Sarah Moon, and Leonor Fini, Cohenca is also influenced by the cinema of David Lynch and Andrei Tarkovski. Accordingly, movement, time, poeticism, and illusion are all important in the work.
Biography
Myriam Cohenca (b. 1992, France) is a French-Israeli artist and photographer who works between Tel Aviv and Paris. Recent projects include at Millepiani Gallery (Rome) and with Phi Mag (UK), both in 2021 as well as with La Culture & WithDraw the war (Tel Aviv) and Siilk Gallery (Athens) in 2022. Led by ideas of exile and identity, Cohenca works collaboratively with other artists, musicians, and sustainable brands to create portraits, cover art and video. She currently also works as an art director and photographer for Louloucup and teaches coding online. She is undertaking an MFA at The Sorbonne having previously studied Psychology and Photography.
Get in touch !
Thank you!