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.
INSTALLATION ART
Am Are I
The Images of my brain’s reactions to various sound stimuli are articulated through MRI. The questions that arise when looking at the actual materialization of these reactions are about the relationship between identity and corporeality and the constant exchange with the environment.
Translation
In these works, I aspire to blur the boundaries between scientific and artistic views of the body. The process involved translating CT images into digitalised images, printing them onto fabric and embroidering them with a pattern of knots, which has multilayered meanings.
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.
Edginess
As an artist I am interested in the relationship between the human body and its environments.
I accentuate the porous semipermeable membranes of bodies that are in a constant process of exchange.
Watch every drop
Knitting plastic bags, found in places such as the beach or natural environments, enabled me to communicate the severe impact those have on Earth.
Cocooning
Cocooning is comprised of a series of “sketches” in which I knit myself to objects, becoming wrapped in red threads, forming a cocoon in different locations—a corner of a street, a front yard of an art institution or a shop front.