Marie Cochran

Marie T. Cochran (born 1962) is an American installation artist, educator, project strategist, art writer, and art curator. In 2020 to 2022, she was Lehman Brady Professor, at Duke University.

Early life She was born and raised in Toccoa, Georgia, a place Cochran refers to as "a special place." Her work centers issues of race and gender from an African-American perspective, and explores the dynamics of Affrilachia, referring to the history and culture of African-Americans and other people of color from the Appalachian region of the United States. In an interview Candice Dyer, Cochran says, in regard to Appalachia, that "People associate Blackness with Atlanta, Detroit, D.C., but we have it here in the mountains. We may be small, but we’re large in impact.” Cochran has been a visiting professor in a number of universities, including the University of Georgia, Prince George's Community College, and Western Carolina University. She was the Lehman Brady Professor at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University beginning in the fall semester 2020 through the spring semester of 2022. During Spring 2022, she taught an undergraduate and graduate course as the Lehman Brady Professor titled Black Spaces Matter: Race, Place, and Resilience. She said that her goal with this project "was to create a sustainable collaborative network among the region’s artists and community organizers." The Affrilachian Artist Project "encompasses all forms of expression including music and literature."

Cochran had artwork included in the 2020 exhibition at Asheville Art Museum, Appalachia Now! An Interdisciplinary Survey of Contemporary Art in Southern Appalachia. The exhibition of 50 artists explored "the amalgamation of tradition and present-day perspectives extant in contemporary artistic representations of life in this region."

Cochran "uses visual art to convene partnerships that ignite collaboration." She also won the Georgia Council's Arts individual artist's grant; the Mid-Atlantic Arts Council's "Artist as a Catalyst" grant; the NEA/Southern Arts Federation Sculpture Fellowship and Fast Track Challenge Grant and the "We Shall Overcome Fund" by the Higherlander Center for Research and Education in New Market, Tennessee.