Zoë Cohen was born in 1977 in Boston MA. She received her BA in Fine Arts from Haverford College and her MFA from Brooklyn College. Zoë's work has been presented in a variety of exhibition spaces including the Museum of Contemporary Art Arlington, The Ely Center for Contemporary Art, GoggleWorks, Underdonk, The Abington Art Center, Flux Factory, the Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History, The Philadelphia Museum of Jewish Art, The Painted Bride Art Center, and Arttransponder (Berlin). Her work is in the permanent collection of The Philadelphia Museum of Jewish Art, The Philadelphia Cathedral, and the Museum of Art and Peace as well as private collections. Recent print and online features include the I Like Your Work Spring 2023 catalog, Mepaintsme, and Deanna Evans Curated Studio Visits. Zoë has taught as an Adjunct Professor at Tyler School of Art at Temple University, Moore College of Art and The University of the Arts. Her Studio Residencies include The Vermont Studio Center, Philadelphia's 40th Street AIR program, and the Artist-in-Residence program at the Philadelphia Cathedral. Her studio practice is currently complemented by her work as a union organizer for higher education workers in the Philadelphia region.

My current body of work consists of drawing, broadly defined, on paper and wood. This work is a practice of symbolic process-driven abstraction, drawn from the intersection of my affection for the landscape and the body, and of my interest in the impact and power of collective human activity. The worlds that my projects reflect are landscapes both invented and experienced, organizing for power in the workplace, of contemporary and historical Jewishness, and of spaces that resonate with the past and live in the present. I employ layered mark-making to create meaning through repetition. I intend for these works to be responsive to the quiet rhythms of the inner life, while also retaining an expansive scale that refers to larger ongoing movements, both of human activism and of the natural world. What I find exciting about abstraction is the reward it provides to slowing down, and paying close attention. Paying close attention requires a thoughtful gaze, time that is outwardly non-productive. It invites a response that can resonate with any part of the viewer’s lived experience. Abstraction can relate to the largest abstract theories and to the most mundane lived moments. In these ways I consider it an important challenge to the expectations of capitalist society in which time spent is valued by its production. 

Exhibition:

In The Middle With You