Does anyone remember us? — Teva Cosic, on Family, Folklore and Image Making.
Interview with Teva Cosic by Adam Rivett, 16 June 2025Adam Rivett: So, where did it start for you? Was it photography from the start, or did you come to it after dabbling in some other forms? Did you always have this desire for image-making?
Teva Cosic: I came to photography quite early in life. My dad was a painter, but he was always taking photos, too — reference photos and family photos. I saw him using the camera and was drawn to it. I was always trying to get a few shots in here and there when I was allowed. I guess that I’ve always wanted to take photos, but the film was (and still is) really expensive, so it wasn’t until digital came along that I finally had more freedom to experiment.
From there, photography really stuck with me. At first, you don’t put as much thought into it. “Oh, that’s cool; it’s a picture of the world.” That sort of childlike reaction. But it slowly continued into high school, the stuff that everyone talks about — the magic of the dark room, seeing the film develop. The classic love story, right?
When I started my undergraduate degree, I felt very lost. Questioning myself — why was I making photos? I hadn’t thought in historical or theoretical terms before, just practice and instinct. But then you get hooked on new ways of thinking and writing, and it feeds your work, and now it’s a bit of an obsession.
AR: As I was looking at this new set of images and your earlier Wander Lines series, I was thinking about process — about how the new work develops or refracts some of the ideas. How they convert or transplant them? Do you believe you are initially struck by specific images without knowing why, or do you think you’re after certain things with a concrete image in mind, and it’s about narrowing in on one of those images?
TC: My process has changed a lot — I’m more research-driven than I used to be. It’s a reciprocal process between reading and writing, research and image making. They feed into each other, this continuous circle. Prior to studying and having an idea of what this truly means, maybe in the early days, I was just hoping for the best, so to speak.
I feel like my current practice and process is much more confident, even since making Wander Lines. Sometimes I’ll have an ‘image’ in mind and try to execute it, or perhaps there’s an underlying connection I want to draw. But often, the idea evolves during the making. Other times, I’m just out in the world fishing for things, collecting images in a more haphazard documentary kind of way.
AR: When you talk about research, I wondered how to split that difference — you know, what’s family history and a more intellectual or abstract engagement with archetypes or cultural forms?
TC: I think they’re very much entangled with one another. From a research perspective, I guess it generally begins with art/history or philosophy. The personal element is more like the driving force behind the work. I use research to strengthen my understanding of the underpinning themes I’m interested in, such as identity and belonging, for example. The more I read, the more I’m also amazed at how many different areas of study intersect with photography, both in practice and discourse. I guess I keep returning to this notion of praxis and art as knowledge production. Something that used to get thrown around a lot in the classroom.
AR: We can talk like Marxist theoreticians for a bit.
TC: What were these terms that we learned? You know, it’s been a few years since I was actually at school.
AR: Sorry to make you revisit this language!
TC: Most of the time, you’re not talking to people in academia anyway. You’re talking to normal people who just want you to use normal words, right? It’s a fine line trying to incorporate what you’re reading and the theories you’re interested in into how you write and speak about your work. I’m conscious of not letting it overtake too much, because I feel like many of the images I try to create are about real things in the world – they’re deeply relational and carry more emotional weight. Even if you look at them in more conceptual terms, I like to think they’re ‘readable’ to a general audience, despite their personal nature.
It’s sometimes challenging when you do get asked, “So, what kind of pictures do you take”? And are faced with having to use some inevitable umbrella terms such as ‘fine art’ or ‘portraiture’. And then trying to explain, you also make weird self-portraits, that you take pictures of bloodied rocks, burning effigies and your naked mother.
AR: I was going to ask you about this. You mentioned your photographic inspirations from your family, and I know Wander Lines was based on a six-week trip back to Sweden. Are all the people in the new photographs relatives or family?
TC: Yes. The work I created there featured my mum and grandma. In the new work, the images feature only me and my mum.
AR: One of the things I was wondering, in terms of practice, is how the new images come out of your older work and your older considerations. Much of that stuff is based on location, the actual place, whereas the new stuff seems more bound up in abstraction and reckoning with the older work in a new form — the studio-bound work, the shots of feet and nests, the menstrual blood. You’ve taken some of the ideas suggested in the earlier work but made it starker and more standalone than some of the more personalised shots in the past work. Is that how it feels to you, or am I way off?
TC: I think that’s accurate. The work that I created in Sweden was very much tied to location. That place was important in so many ways because of the time spent there as a child. We lived in Sweden somewhere between 1999 and 2001. I went to school there, and that particular period had a profound impact on me. And then I felt confused about it later in life — you feel like you belong over there, but you don’t, and you don’t belong here either. But then again, you do! It’s a strange kind of in-between-ness. I still feel deeply connected to that Swedish heritage on my mother’s side. I still speak the language, although it’s a bit rusty, and have memories and images attached to that place that are very particular.
The work I made there was also more documentary oriented, I wasn’t removed from that part of myself, the way I am here. From a distance, you ask yourself other questions — like how does that culture continue here, in what ways did my mother pass down this cultural knowledge? Making images here turns it into a more condensed and staged kind of image. I feel there is a rupture and continuity to the work that addresses the intimate strangeness of feeling both at home and removed from it. And objects, such as the handmade Swedish clothes from my mother, or the crown of candles for St Lucy’s Day made by my grandfather, act as small vestiges from some other life.
AR: I was thinking about how all the images work — how specific standalone images resonate and how they build meaning through context and arrangement. How do you create resonant single images while also thinking holistically about how the whole show works and how the images talk to each other?
TC: I shoot a lot and return to them at the end. I like to play around with how images sit together, you know, making pairs, making sequences after the fact. I feel like when I'm creating the work, it all kind of makes sense — this thing relates to that thing — and you just follow that little thread in your head. But then the time comes, and you’ve got to cut this massive set of images down to the thirty-eight that end up on the wall. So, you know, it was quite tricky getting it even to that number, which is still quite a lot of images, really!
When I create sequences, it's not just what the image says on its own, but how they speak together. And then maybe it's a bit of an internal process, too — how the narrative emerges through the images, how my feelings about them change through the arrangement. I suppose I try to picture it in terms of the narrative I've got in my head and how the work is supposed to feel — my vision, or whatever you want to call it!
AR: There are certain images that I wanted to ask you about. I could be way off base here, but I sensed an almost folkloric obsession throughout the series—the woods, the nests, the blood. I don’t know what the folklore history of Sweden is, and I don’t know if some of that was tied to images of femininity, blood, and houses or if I’m merely reaching.
TC: No, not at all! I think the folkloric history in Sweden is quite rich, and I’m quite inspired by old children’s books about trolls and other things I read as a child. You’ve probably heard of Astrid Lindgren, who wrote the Pippi Longstocking books — they have this magical element to them. But other cultural and mythological bits are also mixed in there, like the Easter witch. Sweden has quite a rich tapestry of stories and legends around magical creatures and beings, often rooted in Old Norse mythology that people perhaps aren’t too aware of.
AR: I’m thinking of that image of you playing the witch but leaning into the fakery, the constructedness of it, so to speak — the staged nature, the element of distance.
TC: Yeah, that’s part of it. Growing up, we'd spend a lot of time in the forest. When we lived over there, you know, people loved being outdoors. They have this term called ‘allenmansrätten’, which means ‘the right of common access to land’ that essentially allows everyone the freedom to explore and enjoy natural reserves such as forests. I would spend a lot of time roaming around building cubby houses, picking mushrooms or wild berries. So, I draw a lot on that. But it's not the same here. I feel like you don't go out into the forest in quite the same way.
AR: No, it’s aggressively hostile to your survival doing that in Australia.
TC: I mean, we spent a lot of time outdoors here, too. But I think the forests over there just have a different kind of resonance. I try to imagine those kinds of things here as an adult. I think a lot of it's about play as well, about kind of being free to create something that's, you know, not so restrained. I feel like we grow up and are forced to think about serious things. I like coming back to this idea of childhood and the freedom and curiosity it represents.
AR: I was going to ask you also about some of the images — the ones with hidden figures and clothed figures — I’m assuming they’re references to hidden mother photography.
TC: Oh, I did not think about that, actually! I have read about that — it’s such a weird and interesting phenomenon! I think I just came about that image because I was making some work that wasn’t specifically to do with this project — I'd bought all these gloves from eBay and just happened to take a pair off and leave them on the chair I’d set up. And they kind of looked like they still had hands in them, which I really liked, because they obviously don't have anybody in them. They're just sitting there. It was just one of those images I kind of stumbled upon in the process of making something else.
AR: I was going to ask you about the way you use members of your family. You mentioned your grandmother in the earlier shots. Is it hard to know where to draw the line on how much of yourself and your family you give to the public? Both the intimacy and the nudity, but the sense of family history so openly shared with strangers, so to speak? There’s vulnerability in the work, and exposure, too — literal and metaphorical?
TC: It's a kind of cultural thing, perhaps. I feel like Swedes are a lot less prudish about things in general. And, you know, I grew up not thinking there was anything wrong or weird about it — being nude for me was totally fine. But you come here, it's like, oh, what's going on here? So, I think it's received a little differently in Australia. But it doesn’t bother me, I don’t think the images are explicit or degrading, and of course, it’s all consenting. I had a portrait of my mother and my grandma hanging in the Portrait Prize, and my mum was joking about it — “Oh, everyone’s seen my boobs”. I feel like for us, maybe it's not such a big deal. I’m not being confrontational about it — it’s not about provoking people. It’s normalising it.
AR: You mentioned the hundreds of images you narrowed down into the final show. Obviously, the effort of making those selections is part of the process, seeing it all come together. Do you see things that only become clear to you right at the end of the process, so to speak?
TC: I feel like a part of it is always clear to me in making the work, in some weird way. Like I know the feeling it will have but not exactly how it will translate to the final images on the wall. The process of refining the selection does force you to create a clearer picture. You want to strengthen the message, instead of diluting it.
AR: Is there something here that you’re working through or trying to find? It’s a cliché, but is this a process of discovery, so to speak? And a process of connection, too?
TC: I definitely think I use photography as a way of trying to make sense of the world. I’ll use a cliché because you did — it’s about that gap that exists. I'm me, you are you. We can't bridge that gap, but we can try. There are all these things we can’t explain. Like the nature of life and death. It’s inherent in why we make art. I think about it a lot — no more than anyone else, I guess, but sometimes it can feel like you're kind of spiralling out of control. So, I think making images may help one come to terms with mortality and the meaning of life in some way. Who remembers us? Does anyone remember us? Perhaps someone will recall an image I made, who knows? Perhaps it doesn’t matter.
AR: You mentioned the hundreds of images you narrowed down into the final show. Obviously, the effort of making those selections is part of the process, seeing it all come together. Do you see things that only become clear to you right at the end of the process, so to speak?
TC: I feel like a part of it is always clear to me in making the work, in some weird way. Like I know the feeling it will have but not exactly how it will translate to the final images on the wall. The process of refining the selection does force you to create a clearer picture. You want to strengthen the message, instead of diluting it.
AR: Is there something here that you’re working through or trying to find? It’s a cliché, but is this a process of discovery, so to speak? And a process of connection, too?
TC: I definitely think I use photography as a way of trying to make sense of the world. I’ll use a cliché because you did — it’s about that gap that exists. I'm me, you are you. We can't bridge that gap, but we can try. There are all these things we can’t explain. Like the nature of life and death. It’s inherent in why we make art. I think about it a lot — no more than anyone else, I guess, but sometimes it can feel like you're kind of spiralling out of control. So, I think making images may help one come to terms with mortality and the meaning of life in some way. Who remembers us? Does anyone remember us? Perhaps someone will recall an image I made, who knows? Perhaps it doesn’t matter.
EXHIBITION DETAILS:
Opening Night: 6—9 pm, Thursday 10 July, 2025
Artist Talk: 1—3 pm, Saturday 12 July, 2025
Venue: 126 Rupert St, Collingwood
Exhibition Dates: 10—26 July 2025
Gallery opening hours: Thursday through Saturday,
11 am—5 pm, or by appointment.
FOR ALL MEDIA & INTERVIEW ENQUIRIES:
Contact: Georgia Akle
georgia@thepoolcollective.com
+61 422 390 893
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