LIZ COHEN:
CAFÉ PAN-SOVIÉTICO AMERICANO

APRIL 14 – SEPTEMBER 10, 2023

Liz Cohen investigates transcontinental trade, industry, and labor movements across economic systems. Cohen’s exhibition, Café Pan-Soviético Americano, is an emerging body of work involving the adaptation of a Soviet utility vehicle, which through its coffee service celebrates the robust heritage of workers, specifically the women who have harvested crops for generations. The exhibition invites viewers into Cohen’s research on coffee production–one of the world’s oldest and most valuable commodities produced mainly in the Global South.

Cohen uses various tools, including the body, object, and print, to produce artifacts that subvert dominant cultural narratives. Café Pan-Soviético Americano  presents a series of functional art objects or goods that rely on the body and audience participation. This exhibition is anchored by a sculptural automobile, GAZ Build #2, a vehicle exported by the Soviets to Colombia in exchange for coffee, a scarce commodity in the Eastern Bloc. Cohen has turned the Soviet utility vehicle into a functional coffee station, paying homage to the shift breaks workers fought for during the industrial revolution, fueling the energy of laborers. Alongside GAZ Build #2  is a series of new ceramic works reflecting women’s labor used to pick, process, and extract coffee beans.

Cohen is a child of the Cold War, born in the United States to Colombian parents and raised in the 1970s and 80s during widespread obsession with Soviet propaganda. In Café Pan-Soviético Americano, the artist celebrates the labor of the Global South and the socialist ideologies that influenced the formation of her identity as a first-generation American.

Café Pan-Soviético Americano  will be activated on select occasions as a gathering place for the public exchange of knowledge and a platform for local organizers engaged in the struggle for workers’ rights across the coffee industry.

GAZ ACTIVATIONS
GAZ Build #2 is activated every other Saturday through the run of the exhibition. Please see activation dates below. All activations are from 11AM-1PM unless otherwise noted.
May 6
May 20, with Liz Cohen and a Manifesto reading by Liberty Moore, Comrades in Coffee, 1PM-3PM
June 3
June 17
July 1
July 15
July 29
August 12
August 26
September 2

Café Pan-Soviético Americano  is organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit with support from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

Image: Liz Cohen, installation view of Gaz Coffee Build #1 at The Mattress Factory, 2022. Courtesy of the artist. Photography by Tom Little.