Lisa Kokin

Lisa Kokin alters books, text and memory by a complex system of destruction and preservation.  There is as much meaning in what has been taken away as in what remains.  Through her process of artmaking, Lisa is able to explore cultural and personal issues of conformity and gender, the ambiguities of society and the behavior of humans. Her aesthetic in these meanderings is consistently refined and appealing.  The look and feel of books, papers, texts and photographs blend to form a unified structure, whole unto itself even before you begin to mine it for the rich content contained within.
  
Books have played a major role in Lisa's work; she returns to them between bodies of work and as bodies of work in and of themselves. In her current series, she literally reshapes the content of selected old books by making papier mache balls, organ-like objects and cubes out of the shredded pages, then sews the contents back inside and outside of the original book covers. Bits and pieces of the original text remain, although the literal meaning is lost. The covers can no longer contain their unruly "text," and form defines content.
  
Lisa Kokin received her BFA and MFA from the California College of the Arts.