The latest virtual exhibition to be hosted by the Wagner College Union Gallery is Orly Cogan’s “Go Your Own Way,” which is on display online through Sept. 15.
Orly Cogan is a fiber and multi-media artist whose tapestries, drawings and collages explore feminism and the changing roles of women in our society by repurposing vintage fabrics, often previously embroidered by other women.
With humor, candor and a sophisticated sense of composition and movement, Cogan weaves together imagery of women doing mundane or private things with fantastical fairy tales where women become heroes.
Celebrating all aspects of what it means to be a woman today, with a rich exploration of where we came from, Cogan creates gorgeous works that make us laugh and cringe, and with which we often feel a shared sense of experience.
“The tableaux I create are inspired by relationships, pop culture and fairy tales,” Cogan says. “I work with vintage fabrics and embroideries as a base — made by women of previous and more modest eras.
“I act as a collaborator, modernizing their traditional work and altering its original purpose by updating the content to incorporate the unladylike reality and wit of contemporary women: their struggles and stereotypes,” she says. “These issues are different from those of the earlier generation of women, who originally embroidered the textiles to ‘feminize’ their homes.
“I mix subversion with flirtation, humor with power, and intimacy with frivolity. My subject matter is frank and provocative, yet whimsical,” Cogan says.
Orly Cogan was born in Israel, raised in New York and graduated from Cooper Union and the Maryland Institute College of Art. She has been exhibiting her work throughout the U.S. and in Europe for over two decades and has been at the forefront of the fiber arts movement with an emphasis on feminism in contemporary art. She lives and works in New York City.
To read more about where Orly Cogan’s work has been exhibited and published, visit the online exhibition.
For more about the artist, visit her website at orlycogan.com or her Instagram @orlycogan.
