Haya Cohen is an arts practitioner that expresses and experiments with versatile mediums, including working with living art. After immigrating to Australia with her family, in 1997, she worked as a gemologist. Later, Haya added academic studies to her busy life. She completed her PhD in visual arts and cultural industries at Griffith University, Australia. As an arts practitioner, Haya’s main focus is on the continual processes of material thinking and thinking through materials and the relationships between body/self/environment. Her work draws from interdisciplinary areas focusing on intersections between philosophy, biology, cognitive science, anthropology and art. Haya has exhibited internationally and across Australia and published academic papers in interdisciplinary journals and books. Her teaching experience includes Griffith University and Queensland College of Art.
In recent years Haya experiments with printmaking. Her interest in exploring materials and connecting lines of thought are brought through her etchings, linocuts and much more.
BECOMING
As an artist I follow the relationship between human bodies, embodiment and the environment. In Becoming, the focus is put on two liquids, water and blood, with which a person’s first experience of becoming is taking place. I used red food dye to represent the blood, and rainwater collected over time as the environment. These liquids were sucked (using my mouth) into clear hoses, which were woven into large-scale womb-shaped construction. The space created is both enclosing in and enclosing from the environment as a permeable membrane‑allowing air to flow in and out between the yarns to enable movement.
