Joana Kohen: To The Infected Audience,

BERLINARTPROJECTS is proud to present the work of
emerging Turkish artist Joana Kohen in her first solo show in
Berlin. With all but one piece being produced this year, To The
Infected Audience, is a current snapshot of Kohen’s artistic
process in which she uses her own body as the main site of
investigation.

Kohen’s incisive work grapples with digital narcissism and the
cult of individuality, self-image and the beauty myth. With an
emphasis on viewing and being viewed, pieces like Free
Transform and Look Of Now engage with the commonplace
nature of Photoshop retouching as well as the hypervisuality
of the post-internet generation, the audience to which the
title of the show might refer. In line with the contemporary
fragmentation of self and photo editing’s cropping functions,
Kohen divides her naked body into multiple parts and cuts
out individual facial features in works such as Piece of Me, As
You Wanted Me To Be and Life for Rent whilst this same
impulse also leads her to split single works into triptych
formations in a multiplication of motifs.

A sense of symbolic violence, not of digital cropping but of
physical cutting, permeates Kohen’s more abstract pieces on
show. Playground is the last in a line of gold-plated objects,
cages attached to chokers and an object seamlessly
combining a comb with a knife preceding it. Made entirely of
barbed wire, the swing is impossible to sit on, drawing the
viewer in with its golden allure as much as it threatens to rip
their skin if touched. Like Kohen’s cages without doors,
Playground denies its original function in glittering protest.
Similarly, Future Female Part II, Re-Amazon Edit features the
artist throwing a spear, the target remaining unseen and the
impact unheard. The threat is thus present, yet unrealised.
Accompanying the three-screen video piece is the weapon
itself, gold-tipped and dangerous-looking.

From her early images of pregnancy tests and male
underwear dipped in sticky black liquid polyester to the more
current works showcased in the exhibition, Kohen’s
engagement in gendered discourse and fetishism is clear. As
the artist notes, “I want to awaken people through my
objects, which may appear quite violent.” Be it by
metaphorically chopping up her own body to gold-plating
barbed wire, Kohen takes a destructive approach to her art in
order to mobilize the viewer and navigate the shifting waters
of digital transformation.

Born in 1988, Kohen lives and works in Istanbul, where she
has founded the Un-Known Art Initiative – an art space that
also publishes the Un-Known/zine and Prospektus Artist’s
Books. Kohen completed her studies in textile design and fine
art at the Istituto Marangoni, Milan, and the Royal Academy
of Fine Arts Antwerp. She exhibits widely in Turkey and her
work has recently been featured at the Benetton Foundation
Art Collection, Treviso, Italy, and at Abrazo Interno Gallery,
New York. Kohen has also participated in several international
art fairs, notably Contemporary Istanbul, Spectrum Miami
Contemporary and Contra London.