Mirit Cohen

This drawing confronts the viewer with scrawling webs of graphite, at once reminiscent of script, barbed wire, and neurons. In the lower right, groupings of circled figures flank dense patches of mark-making.

Born to Jewish parents displaced by the Holocaust, artist Mirit Cohen spent her first years itinerant until her family was admitted to Israel in 1948. In 1976, after achieving artistic recognition in Israel, she moved to New York City to study at the School of Visual Arts. Cohen described her move in a letter to a friend: “Despite my loneliness I do not wish to be anyplace else. Actually, I was always lonely. We are all lonely and perhaps that is the reason we choose to be artists.” This work invites us to consider the intersection of trauma to disability, illness, and art.

-Label written by Maddy Cherr (RISD BFA 2022, Illustration)