Ana Paula Cohen

Biography

Ana Paula Cohen is an independent curator, editor, and writer. She completed her PhD, Reconstitution of a Body of Work: Art, Life, Museums and the Different Modes of Inhabiting Them (2020), at the Nucleus of Subjectivity Studies – PUC, São Paulo. From 2017 to 2023, she founded and chaired the postgraduate Program in Curatorial Studies and Practice at FAAP. She was curator-in-residence at the Center for Curatorial Studies – Bard College, New York (2009–2010), co-curator of the 28th Bienal de São Paulo (2008), and co-curator of the Encuentro Internacional de Medellín 07.

She has served as a visiting professor at the California College of the Arts, co-director of PIESP – Independent Program for Artists in São Paulo, and director of the Programa Bolsa Pampulha at Museu da Pampulha.

Cohen has curated several exhibitions, including: Texto by Thiago Honório (Capela do Morumbi, São Paulo); On Cohabitation: Films by Yael Bartana (The Banff Centre for the Arts, Canada); Embodied Archeology of Architecture and Landscape (Tel Aviv Museum); Living Under the Same Roof (Hessel Museum of Art, Bard College, New York); Cildo Meireles (Museu de Antioquia, Colombia); and Telling Histories – An Archive and Three Case Studies (Kunstverein München, Germany).

She has written on the work of numerous artists, including Mabe Bethônico, Yael Bartana, Renata Lucas, Lygia Clark, Goldin & Senneby, Erick Beltrán, and Cildo Meireles. Since 2016, she has been the director of GOA – Independent Program for Artists, together with artist Thiago Honório. Since 2019, she has also led the Artistic Clinic – weekly individual sessions with artists focused on extra-personal and psychoanalytic listening.

Ana Paula Cohen, Independent Curator in São Paulo, Brazil, has been awarded by Terersa Bulgheroni.