three's a crowd: cocco

On view Jan. 5th – 28th 2018 Opening Reception: First Friday, Jan. 5th 6pm – 10pm, Performance 8:30pm

Control, bruising, loss, desire … combining these sentiments through performance and installation, Cocco’s current exhibition subverts body modification aids in scale and material. By dismembering heads, lips, and eyes, she recasts them as everyday objects such as soaps and pillows. Cocco further engages the agency of these objects through a series of intimate performative acts of washing, repetitive language and play. Stretching the representation of the body, Cocco reduces it to color, surface and material. The work confronts the viewer with questions of intimacy, sexuality and femininity through material investigation and personal psychology. Through her installation she attempts to overcome the impermanence of the body by preserving it as a vessel for memory and as a source of pleasure, pain and identity. Linking the intensely personal with broader human trends and tendencies, Cocco examines her own ideas of self with her performance work. Her installations are activated through the performances as she explores mind and body relationships, aging, gender roles as well as struggles with body image.

Caitlin Cocco received an MFA from Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University in 2013, a Post Baccalaureate from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2010, and BA from the University of Mary Washington in 2009. Cocco is an instructor at The College of New Jersey, Rowan University, Rowan College at Burlington County, and Site Coordinator for Moore College of Art & Design's Continuing Education Department. She currently lives and works in Philadelphia.