Lowrider Builder and Child

2012 - Photography (Photography)

50 x 63 inches

Liz Cohen


The photographic work Lowrider Builder and Child is a companion piece to the video Hydroforce , which features Cohen in the late stage of her pregnancy posing atop a German car that she transformed into a lowrider in a period of ten years. While in Hydroforce we see the artist pregnant, Lowrider Builder and Child features the artist’s newborn by her side. In the image, the positioning of Cohen’s body, together with the tranquil, idyllic nature of the site in which she reclines to breastfeed her baby — with the gentle light gleaming as it bounces off the hood of her car — is a nod to classical reclining nude paintings, which invariably portray female subjects. Beyond the image’s beautiful composition, the work interrogates different layers of meaning, engaging with the politics of the body, motherhood, the female identity, subcultural aesthetics and the ways in which they are all represented.


Liz Cohen is a photographer and performance artist best known for her project Bodywork , in which she transformed a German car into a lowrider while simultaneously transforming her own body, with the help of a fitness instructor, to become a bikini model at lowrider shows. Critical of a consumer based society and its use of the female body in advertisements and music videos, Bodywork was an avenue for Cohen to explore her own femininity and create dialogue around issues relating to immigration, nonconformity, and resistance. Some of her earlier works, consisting of black-and-white photographs and a series of performances, focused on similar issues, which she explored through documenting sex workers from the Panama Canal, as well as producing various portraits of an ostracised poet.


Colors:



Flutter
© » KADIST

Zarouhie Abdalian

2010

The first iteration of Flutter was specifically conceived for the Pro Arts Gallery space in Oakland in 2010, viewable from the public space of a sidewalk, and the version acquired by the Kadist Collection is an adaptation of it...

Frontier-Linear
© » KADIST

Doug Aitken

2009

The version of Frontier acquired by the Kadist Collection consists of a single-channel video, adapted from the monumental installation and performance that Aitken presented in Rome, by the Tiber River, in 2009...

Untitled (Construction)
© » KADIST

Larry Bell

2007

Untitled (Construction) recalls the series of glass cubes that gained Bell international recognition in the 1960s...

Untitled (Blue Chapel)
© » KADIST

Robert Therrien

1985

In No Title (Blue Chapel) Therrien has reduced the image of a chapel to a polygon...

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Hydroforce
© » KADIST

Liz Cohen

2011

From among a cloud of fake smoke we see a heavily pregnant Cohen wearing a bikini and golden stilettos with lace-up straps wrapped around her legs, grasping onto the frame of a modified car as its loud hydraulic system clumsily moves it up and down...

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Masterpieces from the Barbier-Mueller African and Oceanic Art collection to be sold at Christie's in Paris
© » THEARTNEWSPER

Masterpieces from the Barbier-Mueller African and Oceanic Art collection to be sold at Christie's in Paris Art market Museums & heritage Exhibitions Books Podcasts Columns Technology Adventures with Van Gogh Search Search African art news Masterpieces from the Barbier-Mueller African and Oceanic Art collection to be sold at Christie's in Paris The auction next month will include 100 pieces acquired by Josef Müller and his family Vincent Noce 6 February 2024 Share Twin Baulé mask (Nda), Côte d'ivoire Image: Christie's Ltd One hundred pieces from the prestigious Barbier-Mueller African and Oceanic Art Collection will be auctioned at Christie’s in Paris on 6 March...

Iyami
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Ishola Akpo

2021

Noticing the lack of archives on the queens of various African kingdoms, artist Ishola Akpo created several series of work that retrace their history...

Craig Kucia: machines to solve unsolvable problems at SHRINE Gallery, NYC (Review)
© » ARTEFUSE

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The Workshop
© » KADIST

Gilad Ratman

2014

Originally a multi-channel video installation with sculptures and sound, this iteration of The Workshop by Gilad Ratman is a three-channel distillation of the expansive project that follows a group’s underground pilgrimage from Mt...

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Hydroforce
© » KADIST

Liz Cohen

2011

From among a cloud of fake smoke we see a heavily pregnant Cohen wearing a bikini and golden stilettos with lace-up straps wrapped around her legs, grasping onto the frame of a modified car as its loud hydraulic system clumsily moves it up and down...

El mar y sus múltiples afluentes
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Adriana Bustos

2018

El mar y sus múltiples afluentes (The Sea and its Multiple Tributaries) builds on the concept of trafficking that Adriana Bustos has been exploring over the last decade...

Potosi
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Antonio Vega Macotela

2022

The mines at Potosí are both the site and subject of this work, also titled Potosí, by Antonio Vega Macotela...

Study from May Day March, Los Angeles 2010 (Immigration Reform Now) and We Are Immigrants Not Terrorists
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Andrea Bowers

2010

The small drawings that comprise Study from May Day March, Los Angeles 2010 (Immigration Reform Now) and We Are Immigrants Not Terrorists are based on photographs taken at a political rally in downtown Los Angeles in which thousands of individuals demonstrated for immigrants’ rights...

Radical Hospitality
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Andrea Bowers

2015

Bowers’ Radical Hospitality (2015) is a sculptural contradiction: its red and blue neon letters proclaim the words of the title, signaling openness and generosity, while the barbed wires that encircle the words give another message entirely...

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Stong Sory Vegetables
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Laure Prouvost

2010

In Stong Sory Vegetables , Laure Prouvost explains that she woke up one morning and that some vegetables had fallen from the sky on her bed, making a hole in her ceiling...

Vision (Bump’n’Curl)
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Dannielle Bowman

2019

Vision (Bump’n’Curl) by Dannielle Bowman is from a series of photographs titled What Had Happened ...

Llorar mucho (To Cry A Lot)
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Fernanda Laguna

2017

Llorar mucho (To Cry A Lot) is representative of Fernanda Laguna’s practice of the past twenty years...

Spectral Days
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Setareh Shahbazi

2013

Shahbazi’s early drawings in the series “Oh No…” are reminiscent of comic strips or children’s coloring books...