lisa kokin makes art with found materials. her work is so diverse that i had a difficult time deciding what to highlight. 
the button sculpts? book collages? altered books? sculpture? i settled on the ‘sewn found photos’. kokin’s work speaks to one of the most powerful aspects of photographs: their ability to evoke nostalgic memories. i was immediately drawn to this series of found photos. she cuts them apart, then reinvents the fabric of the subject’s life by sewing them together in a unique way.
kokin on kokin:
“I am intrigued with other people’s photographic recording of their lives both for the generic quality they possess and for the feeling of sadness and nostalgia that acquiring other people’s memories provokes in me.
I sit in my studio and speculate about the nature of the photographed people’s lives. I try to invent an altogether different identity for them but of course, in the final analysis these works are more about me than any of the hundreds of anonymous individuals who appear in my work.”
note: in the picture above, right – kokin uses polymer clay as the base for each wired photograph
Oh, my goodness. On first glance I saw the bottom of the sewn found photo and the lines of the words evoked striped prisoner uniforms, and the threads evoked barbed wire. It immediately evoked Holocaust death camps to me, a reminder that we must never forget. And that of course led my thoughts to Guantanamo and more people held without a voice. Perhaps not coincidentally yesterday I was looking through the latest issue of Metalsmith which featured a basket made with barbed wire. And yesterday was the end of Passover, which is all about escape from enslavement to freedom. And yet still all over the world we have enslavement.
Imagine a piece like this one, with the backs the same, but the fronts are photographs of prison guards. Yikes. Thanks for this exposure to Lisa Kokin’s wonderful artistic voice. Peace through art, friends.
Thank you Susan for this gem! What a great artist!
Nadja
WOW this is wonderful stuff here!