Lilach brings lively textured images perfumed with spices, layered with clay and other embedded found natural elements to stimulate all the senses, not just the visual.
‘Woman-Nature’ features at the Helensville Art Centre, focuses on the relationship between Cohen as a woman and her deep connection to Mother Earth.
Invitation ‘Woman-Nature’ An exhibition by Jewish artist Lilach Cohen. You are invited to the opening – 12-2pm Sunday 25 July
Refreshments will be served. Helensville Art Centre 49 Commercial Rd, parking behind the building from Porter Cres, by the playground. Please RSVP to 022 60 789 23 by Wednesday 21st July. Gallery hours: 10.00 – 4.30 Thursdays, Fridays 10.00 – 2.00 Saturdays.
Artist’s statement
‘Woman-Nature’ expresses my deep connection to Mother Earth. Recent works incorporate sand, clay and spices as I love the stimulus of all the senses, not just the visual.
Each material that comes from mother earth is one strand of our femininity. For example, clay represents the sensual aspect of women. Shells represent our spirit or our soul. Different spices have the aroma of our childhood and can represent our past experiences. Charcoal or burnt wood represents my people who have suffered in the Holocaust.
Biography
Lilach Cohen was born in Israel, 1971, just before the Yom Kippur War. A child of French Jewish exiled family, who maintained their Jewish culture sacred. Warning sirens sounds, death and survivors were often counted on a daily basis. Cohen spent half of her childhood in shelters.
Cohen discovered her creativity while in shelters, at a very young age. While exposed to the danger she escaped into an imaginary world by using found objects. Burned matches became pencils, old bubble gum was shaped into animals and spices were her colours.
With time writing, drawing and painting were her safer place. She expressed her feelings, memories and life triumph by using found and natural resources.
Later on in life, Cohen was searching for a safe place to call home and immigrated to New Zealand, Aotearoa in 2003. She trained at Whitecliffe School of Art and exhibited at North Art Gallery and the Helensville Art Centre.
She was commissioned and collaborated in the design and detail for a number of significant ritual projects for Beth Shalom and Auckland Hebrew Congregation.
Recently moved to Helensville, from the North Shore, Cohen holds art therapy workshops at the Art Centre. She works with gifted youth and with women to express themselves through creativity. She encourages students to explorer natural resources concerning them with their identity.
Lilach Cohen takes viewers through her memories, life triumph and passionate love of nature underpinned by her identity as a Jewish woman.
Recent works incorporate mixed media, sand and spices to express, portray, and stimulate the deep connection to Mother Earth, Papatuanuku and her deep heritage.
