Leila Heller Gallery is holding The Poetry of Water, American artist and filmmaker Maxi Cohen’s first solo exhibition in the Emirates. On view are her creations (paintings, photos, multimedia artworks, installations, and others) related to water captured in the UAE. The exhibition will be open to the public until 15 January 2024.
Fascinated with water, Cohen has been filming and taking photographs of rivers, oceans, springs, and waterfalls all around the globe for the last 25 years. In 2020, during Expo 2020, she came to Dubai to learn more about current climate change innovations and issues of global sustainability. Cohen found out that the Emirati bodies of water differed from those she had seen in other places in the world. Here, the water showed its beauty in unexpected ways. The artist was especially mesmerised by the Jubail Mangrove Park. “When I arrived, there was no water and hours later, it flooded; an ever-changing landscape […], weirdly different […],” she says. “The vegetation reminded me of Arabic calligraphy in the […] way it curved and danced.”
Cohen also creates bio-resonant artworks which shift people’s consciousness regarding the water in our bodies. To produce such art pieces, the artist works with the dArt NYC team. Its mission is to create a deeper emotional connection with art by engaging all five senses. To do so, mixed reality, sound, haptics, scent, and taste are employed. In the Poetry of Water exhibition, visitors have the chance to experience two such interactive artworks. Wearing an EEG headband, a haptic vest, and an MR headset, the first work allows one to see their brain activity translated into water. The second artwork employs spatial video to present the story of a man and a fish.
About the artist
Maxi Cohen (b. 1949, Vineland, New Jersey, USA), who resides in New York City, obtained a BFA and an MA from New York University. She has produced and directed a full range of work for film, video and television. In the 70s, Cohen was director of New York’s Video Access Center, the first public access facility in the country, and a founder of the community television Cape May Project. She was also a co-founder of the independent film distributor First Run Features and a founding member of the Independent Feature Project. Cohen has also taught at the NYU Graduate School of Education, the New School, and Pratt Institute.
In her works, Cohen delves into American culture and finds humour and pathos in daily life. Her portraits of ordinary people have an immediacy and simplicity that is sometimes comic or disturbing. A big part of Cohen’s practice is also associated with water. Travelling the world to film and photograph different bodies of water, she then uses these images and film footage to create multimedia artworks and installations. Cohen’s latest project, A Movement in Water, is an interactive travelling public art installation which allows viewers to experience and understand the power of the water in them. The artist says that it is intended to give one such a profound experience that they will effortlessly change the way they relate to themselves.
Cohen has displayed her works (films, photos, and multimedia installations) in a plethora of exhibitions and festivals across the world which include Water (ARTRA Gallery Exhibit, NY, USA, 2019); Ladies Rooms Around the World Apalazzo Gallery, Brescia, Italy, 2018); Aurora’s Ring, 13 Indigenous Grandmothers Council (Stockholm, Sweden, 2013); Berlin Film Festival (Germany, 1990); Tokyo Film Festival (Japan, 1988); Athens Video Festival (Greece, 1985); Venice Biennale (Italy, 1984); and many others. The artist’s art pieces are part of various esteemed collections such as the Museum of Modern Art (NY), the Museum of Fine Arts (Houston, USA), and the National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa), to name a few.
Cohen is a recipient of numerous awards: Buckminster Fuller Institute’s Design Science Studio (2021); Epic Award Nominee: White House Project (2010); Silver Apple Award: National Education Media Network, South Central Los Angeles: Inside Voices (1996); First Prize: Utah Film and Video Festival, How Much Is Really True? (1992), and others. The artist has received numerous grants including those from the Open Society Foundation (2021), The Nathan Cummings Foundation (2014), New Jersey State Film Festival (2005), Karen-Weiss Foundation (2004), and Rockefeller Foundation (1993), among others.
To learn more about The Poetry of Water, please visit the exhibition’s official web page.
You might also be interested in looking at the Every You – Every Me installation at Total Arts.
