Statement

Andrea Mindell Cohen works across disciplines combining printmaking, drawing, painting, and textiles to create immersive installations. Through her work, she seeks to challenge the traditional identities and gender roles ingrained in the Sephardic (Spanish/Jewish) culture, and pursues to construct new meaning in the images she creates. Her artwork is deeply influenced by her Spanish/Moroccan heritage, Sephardic roots, and upbringing as a first generation Canadian raised by immigrant parents and grandparents. 

The Sephardic culture is beautiful, rich, and glorious -- like eating fresh fruit with honey and letting the juices drip from your fingers. But with this sweetness and abundance, there is a bitter taste that asks women to quietly conform to expectations of beauty, selfless motherhood, and spousal service. And while she is connected to the women in her family and culture, she wants to question and uncouple the role she is meant to inhabit as a woman from this culture.

In an effort to say what is left unsaid, Cohen alters the subjects of her images by obscuring or removing identifiable features. This process of layering and removal is a negotiation between cultural heritage and her desire to imagine new roles and identities within it.

Cohen’s explorations involve collecting the source images as an integral part of her process; Using alternative forms of printmaking through pigment transfers, lithography on varieties of fabric and paper. She frequently integrates her own photography documenting people along with old family photos and found images. Her practice centers around generations of women in ornate traditional wear, prints and textiles of North African and Middle Eastern cultures as part of her cultural memory.