Shir Cohen

I went into lockdown right after returning from an exchange in Burren College, Ireland. I could only take my textile materials from the studio, and began focusing on embroidery. When I ran out of canvas, I started using an old frame and embroidery skeins for weaving. I was reading white-supremacist literature. Why was I reading them? Inevitably, when I will be asked this by a government official, I will give them the naswer: "research", and it would be too simple. The answer I will give here is that I have a sick fascination with these texts, because they deal with the proto-modernist idea of physical disease or degeneration manifesting itself in the soul. For example, the belief that a viral illness can cause one to create degenerate art, or that the shape of one's skull affects their intelligence and personality. In the era of enlightenment, racist ideology had to become scientific, despite being completely irrational. Perhaps, in my reading, I was looking for inspiration in their creative logic. If often reminds me of the troll lofic I find on the less pleasant corners of Twitter. When the physical degree show was cancelled, I began documenting my work in video, and reading over these documentations. I used cartoonish voices, which I inherently assiociated with these texts - they are the height of villiany, and deserved to be treated as such.

In the past year, the imagery I use has turned particularly violent, in response to the great political anxiety around me, and the drastic change of landscape I’ve experienced. Jerusalem is inherently political; London would like to pretend it isn’t. This is why I started painting explicit images of historical, or mythological violence. During the rise of the current protests against police brutality, I got to see this imagery come to life: As if taken from the Bayeux tapestry, I see how dogs and horses are used for oppression, how human limbs and voices melt into tragicomic chaos.