Barnett Cohen shapeshifts between poet, performance maker, object fabricator, and political activist. Born in South Africa, Cohen now lives in New York. Throughout their anti-disciplinary practice, Cohen proposes a kaleidoscopic queer surrealism of futuristic theoretical concepts, engaging bodily shapes, and calls for subversive action. Frequently collapsing borders between genres and mediums, Cohen documents and synthesizes our current reality of ruined meaning, anxious forces, and unremitting violence within dominant ideologies. Their work mirrors a frenetic sense of ever-present discord.

Cohen has staged performances, exhibited, and held readings at Canal Projects as part of Performa 2023, Movement Research at Judson Church, Center For Performance Research, The Exponential Festival, International Objects, The International Center of Photography, JDJ, The Institute of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, JOAN, LAXART, Human Resources, The Box, and REDCAT, City Limits, Rupert, and The Onassis Foundation (online.) In 2021, Open Space/SFMOMA published a collection of their poems alongside those of artist and collaborator Simone Forti. Cohen has been in-residence at Skowhegan, MacDowell, NARS, Rupert, and Denniston Hill. They are a grant recipient from The Foundation For Contemporary Arts, and was nominated for the Rema Hort Mann Emerging Artist Grant in 2020. Their work has been reviewed and featured in BOMB, The New Yorker, The New York Times, T Magazine, Artforum, hyperallergic, Cultured, The Financial Times, and Riting among others.

In 2017, Cohen founded the Mutual Aid Immigration Network (MAIN), a trilingual free assistance hotline for people detained in immigration detention centers across the United States. MAIN connects people who call with bond funds and legal services that can accelerate their freedom from incarceration.