COOPER & GORFER

Cooper & Gorfer is the artist duo Sarah Cooper and Nina Gorfer, known for their richly layered visual worlds exploring themes of identity, memory, and transformation. Working across photography, collage, and mixed media, they create intricate portraits that blur reality and imagination, giving form to fragmented narratives of the female experience.

Artist Story

Since beginning their collaboration in 2006, Cooper & Gorfer have developed a distinctive visual language rooted in photography but expanded through collage, painting, embroidery, and physical manipulation. Their work examines how identity is shaped, distorted, and reassembled, using layered imagery to mirror the complexity of personal histories.

Each portrait becomes a constructed narrative: images are cut apart, rearranged, photographed again, or combined with textiles and surface materials. This process of disassembling and rebuilding reflects the emotional and cultural layers carried by their subjects. Themes of displacement, memory, and belonging run throughout their practice, resulting in artworks that feel both intimate and mythical.

Cooper & Gorfer’s work has been exhibited internationally, including at Fotografiska, and is celebrated for its depth, craftsmanship, and powerful storytelling centered on women’s lived experiences.