projects - Sharjah Art Foundation

These intermixed photographs of Tangier, and Cohen’s home city, New York, all originated as three-inch-square polaroids – a discontinued format.

A riverside warehouse destroyed by fire (New York City), 2010

Jem Cohen
A riverside warehouse destroyed by fire (New York City), 2010
C-print
61 x 61 cm
Image courtesy of the Artist

Overview

Cohen describes the work as «part of the search for a permanent ghost. It can be hard to tell if the subjects are being built or destroyed; even the newest constructions are, temporarily, monuments to the ephemeral, at once colossal and frail.

Seemingly deserted places are actually populated by astonishingly adaptive inhabitants. The photographs (and accompanying film made with Luc Sante) are a study of things caught in the delicate balance between past and future.

This future, and the landscape itself, is often dictated by the obscured but not invisible ‘hand’ of capital and the state, no longer bound by location or nationality.

Courtesy of the Artist.

April 2011

This project was part of Sharjah Biennial 10

Thanks to TAMAAS, Yto Barrada, Oliver Laxe, Karim Nabil, Simona Schneider, Megan Cump, Griffin Editions, East Frames