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Andrea Mindell Cohen

Andrea Mindell Cohen is a Spanish-Canadian visual artist born in Vancouver, B.C. She holds a BFA from Otis/Parsons College of Art and Design in Los Angeles, Ca. and a degree in fashion-textile design from the International Academy of Design and Technology in Toronto, Canada, along with her studies abroad in art history and photography at Lorenzo de Medici School in Florence, Italy.
After working many years in the fashion industry, culminating in her clothing line, Andrea settled in Barcelona, where she began working as a textile and graphic designer. It was during this time that her collages, prints, and graphic creations started taking on a life of their own. A year in, she immigrated to Tel Aviv, Israel, inspired Andrea to complete her first series of paintings, and develop her fine art practice at the Zaritsky Artists House of Printmaking and Surface Design. She has since returned to her home in Barcelona where her vision continues to evolve, drawing from not only her own colorful upbringing and extensive travel, but also a combination of traditional and contemporary cultural influences.

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As a first generation Canadian raised by immigrant parents and grandparents, I have struggled to establish my personal identity in relation to my religion and family history. My artwork is deeply influenced by my Spanish/Moroccan heritage, and my Sephardic roots. Working primarily in mixed-media collage and printmaking, I challenge the traditional identities and gender roles ingrained in the Sephardic culture, and seek to construct new meaning in the images I create.

In an effort to say what is left unsaid, I alter the subjects of my images by obscuring or removing identifiable features. They become archetypal representations telling their stories through colours, marks and gestures, and motif. This process of layering and removal is a negotiation between my cultural heritage and my desire to imagine new roles and identities within it.

Collection is an integral process for my practice. Through my travels I gather family photos and found images, mixing them with my own photography documenting people, textiles, and architecture I observe. I’m drawn to the elegant images of generations of North African and Middle Eastern cultures women in ornate traditional wear. The Sephardic culture is beautiful, like eating fresh fruit with honey, but there is a sour taste, too, that requires women to quietly conform. The expectation is often that women should marry and have children. I am profoundly connected to the women in my family and of my culture, but disconnected from the role I am meant to inhabit as a woman.

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