Orly Cogan has been an artist I have been interested in since I first saw her work at The Art Gallery of Calgary in 2009. It was my first year at ACAD and Diana Sherlock took our Humanities class to the Judy Chicago exhibition. There was a separate exhibition upstairs in the gallery and this included Orly Cogan’s textile based work.
Orly Cogan is female artist from Israel but is now currently living and working in New York City. Cogan works in many different mediums including: textiles, drawing, photography and installation that are mostly based on ideas around femininity and gender.
Source for images and information
The pieces you see above are Cogan’s textile based works that I saw at the show in my first year at ACAD. They are found fabrics (table cloths/table runners) that Cogan got from a thrift store and then stitched her own imagery on top of them and sometimes painted them as well. Cogan is interested in the generation of women from the past who made these domestic artworks and how women today differ from them. In Cogan’s artist statement she wrote that she considers herself to be a collaborator that modernizes women’s traditional work from the past and alters its original purpose. Cogan is interested in the dichotomies of gender and what role women play in society today.
I can relate to Cogan’s work not because I make work based around feminism but more so because I also use found fabrics within my practice. I enjoy going to Value Village and looking through the old fabrics from the past and I think when these found fabrics are used in the right way they can add to your conceptual idea’s when trying to reference something from the past. In Cogan’s case she is referencing women’s roles from the past whereas I am usually referencing a type of person or place from the past. I enjoy how Cogan juxtaposes her own imagery on these pieces and breathes new life into them. She was my initial inspiration for using found fabrics and it did take me awhile to figure out how they were relevant to my practice. I believe that they are very important to my memory based works because they can better suggest a person, place or time without directly showing the viewer. I will continue to use and value found fabrics within my practice and I can’t wait to see where else they take me.
-Vaughan
Vaughan McMillan 