Artist Statement/ Biography

Lauren Cohen's practice focuses on the colonial mindset and its inherent concepts, including the overarching theme of otherness. By superimposing symbols, memories, reinventions, representations and artifacts of other eras and peoples onto contemporary ones and vice versa, she often stages her subject matter like props on a set. There are no carefully balanced compositions, no coherent narratives in her fragmented and disrupted universe. She paints glimpses of cruelty and tenderness, whimsical commentaries, impotent acts, useless rituals and theatrics. Cohen re-imagines and re-interprets historic American crafts and figures. Questioning truth, whether in current news or past historical events, has led her to create fictitious perspectives and narratives where she becomes a type of medium.

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Lauren Cohen (B. 1985. Danvers, MA) has exhibited her work at the Andrew Edlin Gallery, NY, Patricia Sweetow Gallery, San Francisco, The London Institute of Contemporary Art, The Blyth Gallery and Goldsmiths College of London. She was an artist in residence at The Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, MASS MoCA and Casa Quinze Garzas in the state of Michoacán Mexico. Previous juried exhibitions have included Bloomberg New Contemporaries, The Catlin Guide and Saatchi New Sensations. Cohen has a BFA from California College of the Arts, San Francisco (2008) and a MA from Royal College of Art, London (2014).