Bodywork
This instantly collectible limited edition artist's book — featuring rounded edges and nine blown-in, four-color photographic images — documents a recent project by the daring and witty young American artist, Liz Cohen. In 2002, the artist began the process of importing the Trabant, once the most common car in East Germany, to the United States. Upon their arrival, Cohen set to work converting these Communist-era workhorses into souped-up hybrid American El Caminos. Black-and-white photographs and the artist's notes explain the process, and the glossy, blown-in photographs show the scantily clad, stiletto-shod artist posing in typical calendar-shot, car-model form on top of and alongside her works in progress, sometimes accompanied by the real-life mechanics who helped her to reach her dream.
Bio
Artist Liz Cohen is an associate professor of art at Arizona State University’s School of Art. Cohen is best known for her project BODYWORK, in which she transformed an aging East German Trabant into an American El Camino lowrider, and herself into a car customizer and bikini model. Cohen’s work has been characterized as examining immigration, nonconformity and resistance.
Praise for this book
The genius behind the book 'Bodywork' comes from the artist Liz Cohen and artist and publisher Christophe Boutin of Onestar Press. ... In contrast to the purposeful documentary nature of the bound pages, Cohen inserted heavy stock 9x7 inch glossy “pin-up” plates of the other aspect of the project on the body. ...This book is not only a documentary piece, but a complex object that creates a dialogue about the many complicated themes surrounding the project including masculinity and femininity and useful objects versus artful objects. 'Bodywork' blurs many of those lines.
Melanie McWhorter Photo Eye
