Sue Coe
1951–
Sue Coe’s message in Aids and the Federal Government is grim and unambiguous: the AIDS epidemic—personified in dozens of lifeless bodies sprawled on the ground— was neglected by the country’s leaders, symbolized by the US Capitol Building looming at the top of the image, and the cropped, smirking face of an apparent politician or anchorman on a television screen in the foreground. Coe suggests that American military involvement in the Persian Gulf following Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990 came at the expense of addressing the domestic health crisis, which the etching’s caption identifies as the true enemy. The image’s threatening sky, austere palette, and severe figural renderings reinforce its ominous sentiment, and evoke the charged agendas and stark representational modes of art-historical antecedents such as social realism and German Expressionism.
British-born, Coe moved to the United States in 1973 and worked as a freelance newspaper and magazine illustrator at periodicals including the New York Times and Time, and her art evinces a journalistic concern with truth telling and straightforward communication. Motivated by what she has described as “the idea that art can be used to speak for those that cannot,” her paintings, drawings, prints, and mixed-media works involve extensive research and have investigated social and political injustices, such as apartheid, wartime torture, sweatshop labor, and cruelty to animals. Coe’s art embodies activism; she hopes that her moving images—often disseminated through publications—will not only provoke emotional responses but also galvanize protest and positive change.
Introduction
Sue Coe (born 21 February 1951) is an English artist and illustrator working primarily in drawing, printmaking, and in the form of illustrated books and comics. Her work is in the tradition of social protest art and is highly political. Coe's work often includes animal rights commentary, though she also creates work that centralizes the rights of marginalized peoples and criticizes capitalism. Her commentary on political events and social injustice are published in newspapers, magazines and books. Her work has been shown internationally in both solo and group exhibitions and has been collected by various international museums. She lives in Upstate New York.
Wikidata identifier
Q7634046
Information from Wikipedia, made available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License . Accessed May 14, 2025.
Country of birth
United Kingdom
Roles
Artist, etcher, illustrator, mixed-media artist, painter, photographer
ULAN identifier
500005739
Names
Sue Coe
Information from the Getty Research Institute's Union List of Artist Names ® (ULAN), made available under the ODC Attribution License. Accessed May 14, 2025.
