Dr Mor Cohen

I am an art researcher specialising in social art practices, social movements, aesthetics and critical theory. My research interests include visual cultures and politics in Israel/Palestine, feminism and Jewish studies, contested territories and borders. In my research I examine how politics is practised through art, and how political struggles can impact the creation of new aesthetic landscapes.

My Leverhulme funded research project, The Long 1970s: Spaces of Dissent and the Politics of Art in Israel/Palestine, investigates the links between artistic practices and anti-colonial movements. It traces the formation of creative spaces by marginalized communities, specifically by Palestinians and Mizrahim, in Israel/Palestine and their impact on the politicisation of contemporary art. Combining visual studies and geographical methods, this project will expand the sites, practices and methodologies of art research by focusing on the material conditions, institutional processes and social dynamics that shape, enrich and limit political art. By following the dissemination, citation, and continuation of the 1970s anti-colonial legacies in multiple settings and discrouses, I aim to assess the extent and ways art can be mobilised as a form of resistance within Israel/Palestine and other settler-colonial contexts.