Esther Cohen's paintings are inspired by rituals, narratives and cultural aspects and by the relationship between the wild and the man-made. Her work challenges an inner cultural debate between heritage from the past and traditions that carry on to this day. The motifs in her work move between the symbolic and the poetic, while simultaneously investigating personal aspects and collective memory. In a detailed and refine painting technique, if it is oil on canvas, or drawing with pen on paper the artist deals with mapping and the definition of actual and symbolic boundaries. She investigates the domestication of nature, while documenting the process of growth and withering in the wild, she corresponds with the old masters and botanist drawings in a criticizing and contemporary point of view. Through her body of work she invites the audience to observe closely and consider questions regarding identity, evolution and pertinence and brings to mind the dialectics between local and global, east and west, indoors and outdoors, nature and culture.
