Liat Cohen Explores Human Behavior in State of Crisis Through Her New Series

Born in 1987, artist Liat Cohen graduated from the Department of Photography at Minshar School of Art in 2015. The Israeli artist, who is currently based in Berlin,deals with domestic objects, re-placing them as monuments in new surroundings. The creative process involves observing and questioning the resonance of the home space and is a result of the detection of human gestures, pointing to objects with a connection to other territories that historical and political processes embodied within them.

Cohen's latest series continues her fascination with human behavior; this time, looking at the behavior of different societies that were  documented in times of a crisis. Her works were inspired by “Images of Simulation of Pedestrian Crowds in Normal and Evacuation Situations,” research conducted by Dirk Helbing, Ill´es J. Farkas, P´eter Moln´ar, and Tam´as Vicsek from the Dresden University of Technology, Germany. The research  observed the collective phenomena in pedestrian crowds under evacuation situations.

Image: Liat Cohen, Figure, 2020

After examining illustrations, figures, forms and simulations depicting humans evacuating from a threatening situation, this project wishes to depict an atmosphere of distress, where anonymous figures are trying to flee for their lives from an occurrence of a disaster towards an exit point through rooms, corridors, and tunnels.

The aesthetic of these images, composition, color and form, are inspired from the visual language of emergency. Researchers observing the movement of pedestrians describe the motion of human beings under traumatic situations having a similarity to a gas-kinetic or fluid like dynamic. The images that mainly inspired this project were of figures wishing to leave a room on fire or an injured crowd moving in lanes, pictures of the development of bottleneck and clogging situation caused by herding.