Liz Cohen
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Mail code: 1505Campus: Tempe
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Liz Cohen (United States, 1973) is a photographer, performance artist, and object maker whose decades-long career focuses largely on the intersection of immigration, industry, labor, and women’s representation in popular media.
Cohen is perhaps best known for her BODYWORK project, in which she simultaneously transformed an East German Trabant into an American El Camino lowrider while inhabiting a new identity herself as a car customizer and bikini model. Through this immersive series, Cohen produced a body of work that challenges American cultural norms as they pertain to the eroticization of the automobile industry as well as the challenging role of women’s bodies in that space. Cohen’s series, BODY MAGIC (2020), sees the artist further explore similar themes. In black and white photographs, Cohen poses with the iconic lowrider model Dazza del Rio in images that refer to Robert Mapplethorpe’s photographs of the bodybuilder Lisa Lyon.
The artist’s work has been recently included in the survey exhibition, Flow States – LA TRIENAL 2024 at El Museo del Barrio, New York (NY), and the landmark exhibition, Xican-a.o.x. Body at the Perez Art Museum, Miami (FL) in 2024, both with an accompanying catalogue. In early 2021, Cohen was the subject of a survey retrospective, Body/Magic, at the Arizona State University Art Museum, Tempe (AZ)
Recent group exhibitions include transfeminisms at Mimosa House, London (UK) in 2024; Desert Rider: Dreaming in Motion at Denver Art Museum, Denver (CO) in 2023; Stories of Abstraction: Contemporary Latin American Art in the Global Context at the Phoenix Art Museum (AZ) in 2020; and Shapeshifters: Transformations in Contemporary Art at the Cranbrook Art Museum, Bloomfield Hills (MI) in 2020.
In 2020, Cohen received a Guggenheim Fellowship. Past awards also include the Fountainhead Residency (2024), Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Biennial Award (2019); the Creative Capital Foundation Project Grant (2005), and a MacDowell Colony Fellowship (2001).
Liz Cohen lives and works in Phoenix, AZ.
Cohen’s work is interdisciplinary, bringing together inquiry in women’s studies, literature, poetry, and auto mechanics as well as expertise in documentary photography, performance, video, installation, and sculpture. https://www.lizcohenstudio.com
MFA, Photography, California College of Art, San Francisco, CA - 2000
BFA, School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA – 1996
BA, Philosophy, cum laude with high thesis honors, Tufts University, Medford, MA - 1996
Courses
2026 Spring
| Course Number | Course Title |
|---|---|
| ART 499 | Individualized Instruction |
| ART 499 | Individualized Instruction |
| ART 592 | Research |
| ART 680 | Practicum |
| ART 499 | Individualized Instruction |
| ART 592 | Research |
| ART 680 | Practicum |
| ART 492 | Honors Directed Study |
| ART 493 | Honors Thesis |
| ART 501 | Cross-Practice Critique |
2025 Fall
| Course Number | Course Title |
|---|---|
| ART 499 | Individualized Instruction |
| ART 499 | Individualized Instruction |
| ART 499 | Individualized Instruction |
| ART 592 | Research |
| ART 592 | Research |
| ART 680 | Practicum |
| ART 492 | Honors Directed Study |
| ART 493 | Honors Thesis |
| ART 394 | Special Topics |
2025 Spring
| Course Number | Course Title |
|---|---|
| ART 499 | Individualized Instruction |
| ART 499 | Individualized Instruction |
| ART 592 | Research |
| ART 680 | Practicum |
| ART 499 | Individualized Instruction |
| ART 592 | Research |
| ART 680 | Practicum |
| ART 492 | Honors Directed Study |
| ART 493 | Honors Thesis |
| ART 621 | In Practice |
| ART 303 | Portraiture Photography |
2024 Fall
| Course Number | Course Title |
|---|---|
| ART 499 | Individualized Instruction |
| ART 499 | Individualized Instruction |
| ART 499 | Individualized Instruction |
| ART 592 | Research |
| ART 592 | Research |
| ART 680 | Practicum |
| ART 492 | Honors Directed Study |
| ART 493 | Honors Thesis |
| ART 591 | Seminar |
| ART 403 | Senior Photographic Projects |
2024 Spring
| Course Number | Course Title |
|---|---|
| ART 499 | Individualized Instruction |
| ART 499 | Individualized Instruction |
| ART 592 | Research |
| ART 680 | Practicum |
| ART 499 | Individualized Instruction |
| ART 592 | Research |
| ART 680 | Practicum |
| ART 492 | Honors Directed Study |
| ART 493 | Honors Thesis |
2023 Fall
| Course Number | Course Title |
|---|---|
| ART 499 | Individualized Instruction |
| ART 499 | Individualized Instruction |
| ART 499 | Individualized Instruction |
| ART 592 | Research |
| ART 592 | Research |
| ART 680 | Practicum |
| ART 492 | Honors Directed Study |
| ART 493 | Honors Thesis |
2023 Spring
| Course Number | Course Title |
|---|---|
| ART 499 | Individualized Instruction |
| ART 499 | Individualized Instruction |
| ART 592 | Research |
| ART 680 | Practicum |
| ART 499 | Individualized Instruction |
| ART 592 | Research |
| ART 680 | Practicum |
| ART 492 | Honors Directed Study |
| ART 493 | Honors Thesis |
| ART 621 | In Practice |
| ART 303 | Portraiture Photography |
| ART 598 | Special Topics |
2022 Fall
| Course Number | Course Title |
|---|---|
| ART 499 | Individualized Instruction |
| ART 499 | Individualized Instruction |
| ART 499 | Individualized Instruction |
| ART 592 | Research |
| ART 592 | Research |
| ART 680 | Practicum |
| ART 492 | Honors Directed Study |
| ART 493 | Honors Thesis |
| ART 303 | Portraiture Photography |
| ART 591 | Seminar |
| ART 598 | Special Topics |
2022 Spring
| Course Number | Course Title |
|---|---|
| ART 403 | Senior Photographic Projects |
| ART 499 | Individualized Instruction |
| ART 499 | Individualized Instruction |
| ART 592 | Research |
| ART 680 | Practicum |
| ART 499 | Individualized Instruction |
| ART 592 | Research |
| ART 680 | Practicum |
| ART 492 | Honors Directed Study |
| ART 493 | Honors Thesis |
| ART 598 | Special Topics |
2021 Fall
| Course Number | Course Title |
|---|---|
| ART 499 | Individualized Instruction |
| ART 499 | Individualized Instruction |
| ART 499 | Individualized Instruction |
| ART 592 | Research |
| ART 592 | Research |
| ART 595 | Continuing Registration |
| ART 680 | Practicum |
| ART 680 | Practicum |
| ART 492 | Honors Directed Study |
| ART 493 | Honors Thesis |
2021 Spring
| Course Number | Course Title |
|---|---|
| ART 595 | Continuing Registration |
| ART 499 | Individualized Instruction |
| ART 499 | Individualized Instruction |
| ART 592 | Research |
| ART 680 | Practicum |
| ART 499 | Individualized Instruction |
| ART 592 | Research |
| ART 680 | Practicum |
| ART 492 | Honors Directed Study |
| ART 493 | Honors Thesis |