Lisa Kokin

Lisa Kokin works in a variety of materials, from books to buttons to shredded currency. While the materials may derive from many sources, the consistent thread that runs through her work is its connection to sewing and needlework. Kokin comes from a long line of sewists: her Romanian grandmother worked in a New York tie factory at the age of 14, her parents had an upholstery shop on Long Island, and Kokin received her first sewing machine at the age of 9. She describes sewing as a means of attachment and embellishment, and uses it to address social, political, and gender issues that are often at odds with mainstream thinking. Through a labor-intensive studio practice, Kokin expresses her views in a visual language that is at once alluring and tendentious. Indeed, her finely crafted work has an obsessive quality that entices us to move in closer, only to find that the content may be challenging. But Kokin doesn’t shy away from controversial themes. Her current series, Red Line, addresses the ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestine; her series Lucre, made with shredded money, makes a bold statement about greed and capitalism. Kokin is a master of her craft, but her superpower rests in her ability to challenge the status quo with grace, humor, and unflinching honesty.

MH: Your work varies from series to series, but there’s a consistency throughout that is recognizable as your voice. How would you describe your overall body of work?
LK: My imagery can vary a lot, but there are certain elements that unify my work. There’s the presence of sewing in one form or another, which I use as a means of attachment and embellishment. In the past I’ve made books, sculpture, and installations that have a social justice or historical component, and I’ve expressed my various experiences of being Jewish, being in a same-sex relationship, and my affinity with the underdog and marginalized. There’s also an ongoing investigation into Jewish history in a way that makes sense to me as an adult, as opposed to how it was taught to me as a child. So there’s a consistency of looking critically at the outer world and commenting on it, not heavy-handedly or didactically but often with humor.
MH: Your work often includes zippers, buttons, and needles, and you incorporate a lot of sewing and hand stitching. Weren’t your parents and grandparents in the sewing business? This must have influenced your work.
LK: Yes, it has. My grandmother immigrated from Romania to New York at the age of 14 and worked in a tie factory, then my parents had a small upholstery shop on Long Island where I spent a lot of time. These were the days before daycare, so I was around fabric and sewing ever since I can remember. When I was 9 years old, I was given my first sewing machine, this big hunk of cast iron, and it still works well. I also have my parents’ industrial sewing machine which put me through college twice. So sewing is in my blood, a congenital condition, and it connects me to those who went before me.
MH: I love the precision of your work, which has an obsessive quality. I see it as a modern-day version of the “fancy work” that ladies did back in the day: embroidery, lace, tatting. Why do you think you’re drawn to fine detail work rather than, say, large, drippy paintings? What does your process give you?
LK: I’ve never been drawn to paint. I’ve done a lot of drawing, but my thing is materials and materiality. I draw with thread! Regarding the obsessive thing, I don’t have a diagnosis, but I think that when you look at my work you probably would think I have some form of OCD.
MH: You must really enjoy that kind of detail work.
LK: I feel like it's my way of meditating. I’m fully present, in the zone, and I like the effect of it. The only way to get this detailed work done is to sit down and do it. So on a good day it’s meditative, but on a not-great day it can be monotonous. 
MH: If you didn’t have a studio practice, do you think you’d be locked up somewhere?
LK: I like to say that if I didn’t have my art, I’d be a menace to society. I go crazy about the state of the world, but my studio is my refuge, a place where I can go to do what I have to do. It keeps me relatively sane, to the point where if I don’t get into my studio for a couple of days, I start to feel untethered.
MH: I’m quoting you here: “I try as much as possible to relinquish control and let my inner intuitive voice guide me.” How does that work in practice? Your work is very tight and controlled, so how and where do get yourself to let go and let the materials take over?
LK: It’s funny that you say that my work is tight and controlled, because I don’t think of it that way. My current series is The Wandering Alphabet, and it may look organized but it’s completely unplanned. I start with a piece of industrial felt and use the programmed alphabets in my sewing machine, but I manipulate them to create unpredictable patterns. It’s completely spontaneous.
MH: What about content? Are you comfortable with ambiguity? Not the kind where this shape could be a cloud or it could be a bear, but serious issues with conflicting perspectives?
LK: I’m very comfortable with ambiguity. I don’t want to spell things out. If someone misinterprets my work, I’m okay with that. It’s illuminating to hear what people see in the work, especially when it has nothing to do with my intention.
MH: I wonder if as we mature as artists, we move away from black and white and embrace gray scales. It’s like we get more comfortable with ambiguity, not just in art but in life.
LK: Yes, I think so. I don’t want to hit people over the head anymore. I used to think that art could change the world, and I considered myself to be a cultural worker. Now I feel like this is just my take on things, and if you can connect with it, that’s great.
MH: I find some of your work to be subtly subversive, and I wondered how important that is to you. For example, I found an interesting snippet buried in your website, where you refer to “…my divergence from an all-or-nothing stance towards Israel.” How is that expressed in your work?
LK:  I like my work to be subtly subversive because I think it’s important to question the status quo. I have issues with our capitalist system that privileges money over everything, which I address in my series Lucre. And I have issues with xenophobia, racism, and all the other isms, so I like to critique these disparities whenever I can, either obliquely or with humor. I like the quote by James Baldwin, “The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions that have been hidden by the answers”. To me that encapsulates what we’re talking about.
MH: Your current work indirectly touches on the situation in the Middle East. Would you care to talk about that a little?
LK: Yes, a couple of pieces that I’m working on now are connected to what’s currently happening in Gaza. I grew up in a Jewish family, very secular, but I went to Hebrew school which was an indoctrination into a certain way of thinking about being a Jew. I accepted it all until I became an adult and started thinking for myself, and eventually realized that I couldn’t accept the whole package. I was proud to be a Jew, but I didn’t feel that it was the same as being a Zionist. I’m very distressed by everything that’s happened: October 7th as well as the subsequent bombing in Gaza and the genocide of the Palestinians. I know that among Jews I’m a minority and I want to be respectful, so I express my viewpoint through my artwork. My new pieces are like aerial maps, and I’m calling this series Red Line, which is a reference to the red line beyond which it’s not acceptable to go. I feel that we’re beyond there already.
MH: Thanks for sharing all of that. It makes sense that you’d express your viewpoint through your work, given that it’s such an incendiary subject right now.
LK: So much of it has to do with binary thinking and conflations: Jews with Zionists, support for Palestinian self-determination with anti-Semitism, Palestinians with terrorists. It’s not a black and white situation; there are many shades of gray.
MH: In your series Lucre, you stitched shredded currency into ornate patterns and large wall hangings that are incredibly detailed. I read this as a commentary on unharnessed materialism, and yet the work was dazzling and probably expensive. I thought it was subversive in that you were wryly poking fun at the wealthy art collectors who couldn’t resist buying a piece for their collection. What were you thinking about while you worked on this series?
LK: I started the series when Trump became a candidate, and if you look at some of the titles, like Let Them Eat Cake and Cold Comforter, it’s a commentary on the capitalist system, where money dictates everything, including our health. I used shredded money that I bought from the government at $45 for a 5-pound bag, then painstakingly stitched it together to make a statement about capitalism. I loved the paradox and all the connections that were made in the work. Plus, it’s a beautiful material!
MH: By using shredding money, you shred it of its value, right? But then you repurpose it into a luxury item that only affluent people can afford. I love the way you play with the concept and turn it back on itself. Do I also read some self-deprecating humor in it?
LK: Oh, always! I laugh at myself whenever possible. For example, I made a book called Bisexual Behavior Patterns, and it’s all about my former dating experience of being bisexual and trying to date lesbians. I also did a book called Irritable Vowel Syndrome, where I took all the vowels out of a cookbook and put them back into an intestinal tube that trails out from the book. My humor comes out the most in my books, and I have no quality control when it comes to puns.  
MH: It seems like when we repurpose something, even an object as benign as a book or button, we’re undermining its accepted meaning or intention, which is a subversive act. It may not be seditious, but it creates tension and upends value and content. How do you think about altering and repurposing?
LK: I love using things in a way that decontextualizes their original use. I use a lot of sewing notions to make asemic text, and I appreciate those objects for their aesthetic value. By isolating a button and placing it in a different context, it becomes a beautiful little gem.
MH: Hands down, the thing that I think you do so well is to camouflage challenging material in a seductive visual language. Your work is beautifully crafted and appealing, and yet it has this undercurrent that only reveals itself when you get in close. Do you think about this as you’re working?
LK: Yes. I love that. I’m not intentionally trying to deceive people, but I like the contrast that happens when you’re up close versus far away, discovering different aspects of a piece depending on your physical relationship to it.
MH: What would you most like to accomplish through your art practice and career? Beyond the gallery shows, sales, and reviews, what do you want to communicate?
LK: My art practice is the way I synthesize and process my feelings and viewpoints, and if other people see it and can relate to it, I feel good about that. I always tell my students that art is the cake, and the recognition and awards and sales are the icing. The whole process of making stuff is a reward in itself.
MH: What’s the best part about being an artist?
LK: The privilege of being able to spend my life doing this. I feel so fortunate to have a way to process my experiences and feelings in a visual form. I also teach art, and I consider that to be an outgrowth of my studio practice; it’s not a vocation, it’s a calling. And for me, who’s not religious or even spiritual, my art is the closest thing I have to a spiritual practice. It’s the thing I do every day where I’m in the present moment. Creating something from nothing is a sort of transcendent process that I love, even when it’s not going well. I just keep showing up and I know that something will happen.

www.lisakokin.com

IMAGE LIST
All images by Lia Roozendaal
1. Brokeade #2 (detail), 2017, shredded U.S. currency, metallic thread, 26.5 x 26 in.
  2. Brokeade #2, 2017, shredded U.S. currency, metallic thread, 26.5 x 26 in.
  3. Cold Comforter, 2018, shredded U.S. currency, metallic thread, 67 x 44 in.
  4. Cold Comforter, detail
  5. Attachment Disorder, 2017, shredded U.S. currency, metallic thread, 42 x 35 in.
  6. Attachment Disorder, detail  
  7. Red Line, 2023, machine stitching on industrial felt, 28.5 x 29.5 in.
  8. Red Line, detail
  9. Other, 2023, thread, cord, linen, mull, industrial felt, 13.25 x 14.5 in.
10. Sobrante, 2023, thread, fabric scraps, industrial felt, 18 x 18.5 in.
11. Incursion, 2023, thread, mull, industrial felt, 17 x 17.5 in.
12. Who Knows, 2023, thread, trim, pompoms, synthetic felt, industrial felt, 19.5 x 17.5 in.
13. Territory, 2022, thread, mixed media textiles, found objects, 49 x 80 in.
14. Territory, detail
15. Warp #9, 2020, shredded U.S. currency on Canson watercolor paper, 9 x 12 in.
16. Warp #2, shredded U.S. currency on Canson watercolor paper, 9 x 12 in.
17. Shpilkes, 2017, broken sewing machine needles, thread, wood, industrial felt, 36 x 26 x 3 in.
18. Shpilkes, detail
19. Practice, 2015, safety pins, thread, industrial felt, 22 x 15.5 in.
20. Synopsis, 2016, thread, metal, hemp, 23. x 19.5 in.
21. Synopsis, detail
22. Interjection, 2020, thread, industrial felt, 30.25 x 24 in.
23. Interjection, detail
24. Bisexual Behavior Patterns, 1998, altered book, magazine pages, photocopied text, 7.5 x 6 x 1.5 in.
25. The artist and Austin in her studio.