Margaret Cogswell

Margaret Cogswell (born 1947) is a mixed-media installation artist and sculptor based in New York. She emerged in late 1980s as a sculptor, gaining attention for abstract constructions exploring tensions between natural and human-made materials, roughness and sophistication. Since 2003, Cogswell's work has focused on a series of site-specific installations called "River Fugues": individually unique, multimedia projects involving detailed geographical, historical and social research that explore the intertwining of rivers, industry, people's lives, and the increasingly politicized role of water. The series' title invokes the contrapuntal musical form of the fugue to indicate the weaving of disparate voices, layers and media (video, audio, sculptural elements, works on paper) into a harmonious, composite whole. Critic Lilly Wei described the "River Fugues" as a hybrid form based on musical composition that "expresses the complex beauty of rivers … and sounds an alarm over the sweeping environmental changes that have endangered our natural resources."

Cogswell has exhibited at institutions including the Centre for Fine Arts, Brussels (BOZAR), Zendai Zhujiajiao Art Museum (Shanghai), Mid-Manhattan Library, Hallwalls, Wave Hill, and the Field Museum of Natural History (Chicago). She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and awards from the New York Foundation for the Arts and Pollock-Krasner Foundation, among others. After being based in New York City since her early career, Cogswell lives and works upstate in the Catskill Park area. Provided by Wikipedia