Dianna Cohen

Los Angeles-based Dianna Cohen is a multimedia visual artist, painter, curator and co-founder of the Plastic Pollution Coalition, a global alliance of  individuals, organizations and businesses that addresses the pervasive problem of plastic pollution. Best known for her artwork using recycled plastic bags, she was inspired to co-found the Plastic Coalition group through her own art. In 2010, Dianna was invited as a speaker at TED’s Mission Blue Voyage, among other top scientists, conservationists, and artists from all over the world.

Throughout the years Cohen has shown her work in solo and group exhibitions at galleries and museums in the USA, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and Africa. In 2011, her famous wallflowers became part of the permanent collection of the US Consulate General in Tijuana, Mexico. Currently her work is included in the GYRE exhibition at the Museum of Anchorage, Alaska.

This summer, Dianna will continue her collaboration with the Drifter’s Project and the Sustainable Island Model Laboratory (SIM Lab) in Kefalonia. The project is a collaboration between the Ionion Center for the Arts and Culture, the University of Technology Sydney and the Plastic Pollution Coalition. Greek, American and Australian students from various fields work together producing possibilities for new local industries and redesigning options of existing plastic forms. The options developed can be presented to local and international businesses and policy makers to promote Kefalonia as a top eco-tourism destination, and become a model for other Greek islands and island nations of the world.

“Having worked with the plastic bag as my primary material for the past twenty years, all of the obvious references to recycling, first-world culture, class, high and low art give way to an almost formal process which reflects the unique flexibility of the medium.”