CoCo Harris

My art practice straddles the literary and visual arts.

As a lifetime diarist, I am drawn to personal narratives–mine and others. Over a decade ago, I founded the literary press Telling Our Stories Press focusing on showcasing the art of memoir–and particularly, short memoir. Anthology titles include: Impact, Roll, Turns, So Long, and most recently Speak. All illuminating the fact that there’s only one human story. Pushing the boundaries of structure, Reflections and Reverie, were two anthologies comprised solely of memoir of a hundred words or less. A guiding mantra of my press is: “Tell me a story of your life and tell me who you are because of it.”

My visual art practice has been emerging over the recent few years with origins in landscape photography. My images captured around the globe illuminate our planet’s beauty with an aim to increase our preservation of our natural world. As a photo-based artist, my new collection, “Nature Repeating Itself”, employs symmetry as a technique of emphasis.

As a cultural archivist, my work also embodies narrative photography with an ear for social justice. The goal of my art is to create/bridge awareness to the irrefutable connections between the social/economic/political conditions of our nation today in relation to our origins–with particular regard to American Slavery.

One recent highlight was being awarded a full fellowship to Theaster Gate’s Black Artist Residency at the Park Avenue Armory (Fall 2019). This gave me an opportunity to fellowship with great Black artists, curators and scholars which I’d only studied from afar. I have also received fellowships at artist residencies such as Vermont Studios and Drop Forge and Tool, and while there I always work across artforms creating both literary and visual work.

cocoharris.com