Nadia Coën is a multidisciplinary artist based in New York City. Born and raised in Zimbabwe, she has generational ties to Austro-Hungary, Syria, and Egypt.

Coën’s experiential, time-based practice explores the intersection of architecture, poetics, light, and ephemera. Working under the umbrella of The Inclining Experiment, she has produced a wide-ranging body of work that includes architectonic light installation environments, text- and time-based projections, works on paper, artist books and printed matter, and artifact assemblages.

Coën is a two-time MacDowell Colony resident and has exhibited at numerous venues including The Drawing Center, White Columns, Exit Art, the Guggenheim Lab, and the Whitney Museum. She was a resident at Arteventura in Andalusia, Spain in 2023 and returned in summer 2024, and was awarded the Emily Harvey Foundation Residency in Venice, Italy for 2025. She was recently awarded the Edward F. Albee Foundation Residency at The Barn for March 2026 and will also be included in a group exhibition entitled “Time and Materials” at Bienvenu, Steinberg & C in Tribeca, New York. She will return to Venice in August 2026 to develop a site-specific outdoor projection and indoor installation at VisioniAltre Gallery.

A pioneer of the 1980s East Village art movement, Coën co-founded two seminal artist- book collectives: YOUR HOUSE IS MINE and ANTI-UTOPIA. YOUR HOUSE IS MINE is a curated protest project involving over 50 artists, responding to social unrest, homelessness, gentrification, and the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s. The project is held in major collections including MoMA, the Whitney Museum, the Getty, the Centre Pompidou, the Library of Congress, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Coën also maintains a parallel practice in narrative spaces and exhibition design. She has co-created museum exhibitions at institutions including the National Civil Rights Museum, MoCADA, and the Alice Austen House Museum, and is currently developing two legacy museums in Kingston, Jamaica.