About

Ariel Cobbert (she/her) is a visual artist from Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Through a photographic approach to materials and image-making, her work explores Black Southern identity, memory, and care through the use of family archives, vernacular aesthetics, and everyday ritual. Rooted in both historical research and personal narrative, Cobbert’s practice interrogates the production of images and the ways Black life has been recorded, obscured, and reclaimed through photography. 

A large part of Cobbert’s practice centers around capturing the exhale. Quiet, unperformed moments, when peace is found in solitude and safety; when presence isn’t about presentation, but simply being. Cobbert’s process involves personal archives addressing the erasure of Black life in Southern communities. She manipulates images while combining them with wood creating installations that signify erasure. While working in the archives she reimagines human connection through family albums and memory. Blank pages from old albums where images once lived allows the absence itself to become a form of presence. In this process Cobbert finds space where histories reflect the vulnerability of memory.

Cobbert translates vernacular and religious materials such as church pews and strawberry bon bon candy to represent memory uplifting experiences of Black life. She questions how political and religious laws create a uniform of resistance, disproportionately impacting the history of Black women while making the work. The parallels between Queen Nefertiti's iconic crown, the headwraps Black women created in defiance of the Tignon Laws, and the distinctive hats worn in Black Church communities today. She merges candy and black and white portraits highlighting resistance and beauty of  Black Southern identity  .

As a Black woman from the American South, Cobbert’s artistic journey has been profoundly shaped by her personal experiences, cultural heritage, and a deep commitment to combating erasure and false narratives.