May 2022
Exterior Wall Mural, Acrylic on concrete
Size: 60” x 68”
Location: Benjamin N Cardozo High School, Queens NY
Branded Arts X KITH Mural Festival
https://www.instagram.com/reel/CfXzQxGDtp9/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
June, 2022
Interior Wall Mural, acrylic paint
120” x 180”
Location: Long Branch, New jersey
10 x 12ft
Concrete, Acrylic
On the corner of Prince and Elizabeth St in Soho.
A few weeks after the looting and curfews overtook Soho, The Tree of Life was meant to allow for some fresh air amidst the eerily deserted streets of Manhattan.
On site at the Lite Bites by Jacquelyn Kitchen in Brooklyn NY.
25 ft x 12
9 x 5ft
Canvas, Resin, Acrylic, Spray Paint
2020
Studio Installation
10 ft tall
wood, paper, metal, canvas, resin, acrylic, spray paint, rubber
2020
Studio Installation
As a practicing Jew I calculated the hours we are prohibited to “create” due to Jewish practices, religious holidays and the weekly sabbath. It amounts to about 25% of the year in which I cannot create work. I broke the hours down and inscribed them in roman numerals all over the walls of my studio.
Studio Installation
2019,
11 x 6 ft
Acrylic, Spray Paint,
This is on the wall of my studio in Parsons. It was inspired by the questions written in the Jewish Hagaddah read on Passover, " Where are you coming from?" " Where are you going?" and " What are your provisions?"
These are questions I felt were not only ones the Jewish nation at the time was forced to face but also every nation that has been dispersed. In the times of our modernity these are questions we must also need to answer in which asks us to recall our heritage, address our goals and acknowledge our proprietaries.
On the right side of the wall I inscribed my own answers to these questions that I found in the bible in which I translated into numerous languages of Mesopotamia which are also relevant to my communities heritage.
Some of the biblical texts I chose in response were, "To Jerusalem."
"Know from where you came, where you are going, and before whom you are destined to give a judgement and accounting."
"What is mine is yours, and what is yours is yours"
2019
Canvas, Acrylic
11 x 7 ft
This piece, Chapter 1, began by investing time into understanding the divide in our Jewish nation. I thought about the story written in tanach that I learned many years ago, the nation believed they could build a fortress to God. God instead plagued them with not being able to communicate and had them speak 70 different languages. Why can't this concept work in reverse? Language can work as a unifying force in order to gain knowledge as opposed to divide knowledge. With foreign language you must seek help from one who knows the dialect, ultimately allowing for a new human interaction.
Chapter 1 is comprised of 11 languages:
English Hebrew Arabic Spanish Portugese Polish Russian German French Czech Itlian
Why these languages?
These are the languages of Jewish Diaspora. These are just a few languages of the known countries Jews occupy today. It is important to acknowledge the ultimate power in unifying the Jewish nation. Our forefathers remind us to remain unified therefore I choose experts from the book written by and about our forefathers.
In The Ethics of Our Fathers it is written in Chapter 1, as such:
1:2 The world stands on three things: Torah, the service of G‑d, and deeds of kindness.
1:5 Let your home be wide open, and let the poor be members of your household.
1:6 Assume for yourself a master, acquire for yourself a friend, and judge every man to the side of merit.
1:10 Love work, loath mastery over others, and avoid intimacy with the government.
1:13 One who advances his name, destroys his name. One who does not increase, diminishes.
1:14 He would also say: If I am not for myself, who is for me? And if I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?
1:15 Make your Torah study a permanent fixture of your life. Say little and do much. And receive every man with a pleasant countenance.
1:17 All my life I have been raised among the wise, and I have found nothing better for the body than silence. The essential thing is not study, but deed.
1:18 By three things is the world sustained: law, truth and peace.
In order to investigate the meaning of this piece at face value, we must unify the Jews worldwide.
Chapter 1, is the start to a series of work that will continue with Chapters 2-6 of The Ethics of Our Fathers.
Geri Cohen
“The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”
offspring.
The objects shown here have now morphed into a timeless memoir of peices that were initially singular.
One male and one female. They are connected at the head just like the two first humans Adam and Eve in Jewish folklore said to be initially attached and then split into two.
The smaller structure that lays on the right side of the face is symbolizing their offspring.
This piece began on the day in which we gathered all 167 of my cousins to commemorate my grandparents lives after ten years of their passing.
2018
8 x 10ft
Canvas, mirror, glass, found materials (metal, jewelry, cardboard, paper, etc.)
26 x 20ft
2018
Materials: Plastic canisters (neck), container caps (hair), deconstructed door hardware (lips and ear), spliced up football (nose), ULINE metal bars, wood planks, nails and screws (eyes and lashes), shards of mirror, empty concrete glue tubes (eyebrow), spray paint and exterior house paint.
In part II of the prolific series, this power figure is then forced to withstand the cold winter, hot summer and numerous other conditions in order to test its permanence. The materials moved away from adolescent memorabilia to industrial forms. I then asked friends and family to interact with the wall and write whatever they wanted on it. This was the beginning of a stream of interaction and collaboration that I then continued to explored on the third part of this series, "Spring Cleaning."
2017
90 x 50 ft
Acrylic
A mural painted on the broken floor of a full size basketball court in my hometown Long Branch, New Jersey. This court was going to be ripped out within two months of this installation.
11 x 8 ft
2017
Materials:
Markers, crayons, stickers, rocks, ribbon, foam sculpee, Coffee cups, locker magnets, brushes.
I have discovered that through using many different materials, surfaces and scales I have created an iconography which is symbolic of three words; permanence, empowerment and accessibility.
This began in my adolescent basement of the home I grew up in. I closed the doors for nine hours and used just the materials I found in the space to create this work. This displays a coexistence of another human profile nestled within the larger one. The small face was an embodiment of my childhood self existing metaphorically in the literal space. Surrounding it was a much larger self portrait that in a sense it felt like a graduation to higher forms of art. I took the term "high" art to be even more literal than the onset. Existing below grounds was endearing and safe. This mural was the first of a series in which moved above grounds to an outdoor space.