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.
KNITTING A CORPOSELF
Knitting a Corpoself invites the audience to move in and around the room where a knitted body is entwined with/in environment. My installation draws from the traditional story of the golem in the Jewish myth where the golem is an artificially created man, in most cases. Here, a female body is crocheted from hand made threads: I have cooked the cotton with the red soil, separated the cotton into long strips that were rolled on my body to create the threads. Not only the form of the body is brought into the space of the exhibition but also I have included the knitted internal organs within the installation space. The corpoself draws attention to the body-in –process rather than perceiving the body as a container to the soul. In addition, the installation reflects the contemporary moment in postmodernism in which awareness is directed to the flexible and fluid aspects of embodied person.
Knitting as a process, slows down and shows the invisible or imperceptible tempo of change and interaction of person with environment. The video included in this installation details the processes of cooking the soil with the cotton, making it into yarns, knitting and my performative approach to installing the corpoself.
Recent wars and bloodshed emphasise the importance of actualising humanity as a process of emergence. Only an open, fluid approach will demonstrate the degree to which we are knitted to each other and to our environment.
