— Feature
In the Aggregate
Meet Emerging Artists Ficus Interfaith
Three years after Ryan Bush and Raphael Cohen began making art together as Ficus Interfaith in 2014, the Rhode Island School of Design graduates had a revelation: terrazzo could be their medium of choice. Experimenting with this combination of cement and aggregate, the duo saw the material’s potential to achieve vast scale. Cohen recalls that, at the same time, he and Bush were grasping that “terrazzo is rarely attributed to an individual. Unlike the paintings that we studied as vessels of individual genius, terrazzo is described anonymously, as part of a culture.” Enamored with those contradictions — monumental yet authorless — the artists speedily amassed craft knowledge from YouTube videos and trial and error, and by that winter Bush and Cohen were using terrazzo for a Los Angeles gallery show and pouring it into a Berkeley, California, sidewalk. Ficus Interfaith has centered its practice on the material ever since.
Believe What You Read (2021)
Cementitious terrazzo, zinc, cherry wood
21.5” x 43” x 1.25” (open)
21.5” x 21.5” x 2.5” (closed)
Photo courtesy of Ficus Interfaith
The newly minted experts handle terrazzo in a manner that harkens to the 1920s, when the invention of the electric grinder lowered terrazzo’s fabrication costs. Bush and Cohen solder strips of zinc or brass into cookie cutter – like forms that they lay within a mesh metal tray, into which a slurry of dyed cement and various aggregates is then poured. After setting, the composition undergoes grinding, polishing, and sealing. “The strain is very rewarding, because it matches the weight of our ideas,” Cohen says of the labor required of each artwork. Bush further comments that that process has helped the artists discern their individual expression from Ficus Interfaith: “There are limits to the line widths of the metal strips that we solder, there are limits to the dye sources. Those limitations make our two sets of hands disappear and allow us to create a third voice.”
And that voice is loud, as Bush and Cohen deliberately distinguish Ficus Interfaith from the anonymous artists and artisans that preceded them. For one thing, careful viewers will spot aggregates that are unique to the partnership. Whereas terrazzo has been embedded with stone chips, sand, and crushed concrete since its invention, Cohen says, “We smash our own glass, we collect deer bones from the woods, and we experiment with these materials as well as shells, peach pits, and oyster shells.” These ingredients are not only a personal signature — they also advocate to viewers to consume materials mindfully.
Exit Sign (2024)
Cementitious terrazzo, brass
10” x 14″ x 1.5”
Photo courtesy of Ficus Interfaith
A second distinction between Ficus Interfaith artwork and conventional terrazzo is plainer to see. Rebuffing the colorful swaths and classical patterns of Art Deco – era terrazzo, Bush and Cohen treat the medium as a canvas by fashioning their cookie-cutter inlays into attention-grabbing words and images.
Cohen explains that he and Bush carefully select representations that engage in dialogue with terrazzo’s millennia-spanning durability. “The inlays allow us to explore different themes of mythology and timekeeping,” he says. Tapped by a Los Angeles homeowner to floor a freestanding backyard office in 2021, Ficus Interfaith completed a medallion of Icarus to invoke LA’s short but grand history of ambitious visions and broken dreams. For Deli Gallery’s exhibit Earthly Pleasures two years later, the duo created a demountable medallion of the river nymph Daphne — a meditation on solid and liquid, among other readings. “Myths are like terrazzo; both have lasted a long time.”
While commissioned works typically employ time-honored motifs, “we’re trying to push into new territory with exhibition works,” Cohen continues. For these self-initiated pieces, Ficus Interfaith often questions which artifacts of contemporary culture will have the same longevity as the stories of ancient Greece. The 2024 sculpture Spongebob is one case in point. Another is the terrazzo-poured versions of the Bible and Infinite Jest completed that same year: the juxtaposition prompts viewers to consider which books they consider to be timeless expressions of human experience, and it also pokes a little fun at the idolization of David Foster Wallace that Bush and Cohen observe among their peers.
Holy Bible (2024)
Cementitious terrazzo
10” × 7″ × 1.75“
Courtesy of Ficus Interfaith
Terrazzo dates back at least to ancient Egypt, where it served as the basis for mosaic tiles. Since then the material has undergone waves of reinterpretation and popularity. Long before the electric grinder’s appearance, 16th-century masons covered Venice in terrazzo made from marble scraps, while in the more recent past terrazzo has been reinvented by designers Shiro Kuramata and Max Lamb. Only time will tell whether we’re living in a golden age of terrazzo on par with the Renaissance-era Venice or the Roaring Twenties. But if future historians deem it so, then the innovative artwork of Ficus Interfaith will certainly have played a role.
Three years after Ryan Bush and Raphael Cohen began making art together as Ficus Interfaith in 2014, the Rhode Island School of Design graduates had a revelation: terrazzo could be their medium of choice. Experimenting with this combination of cement and aggregate, the duo saw the material’s potential to achieve vast scale. Cohen recalls that, at the same time, he and Bush were grasping that “terrazzo is rarely attributed to an individual. Unlike the paintings that we studied as vessels of individual genius, terrazzo is described anonymously, as part of a culture.” Enamored with those contradictions — monumental yet authorless — the artists speedily amassed craft knowledge from YouTube videos and trial and error, and by that winter Bush and Cohen were using terrazzo for a Los Angeles gallery show and pouring it into a Berkeley, California, sidewalk. Ficus Interfaith has centered its practice on the material ever since.
Believe What You Read (2021)
Cementitious terrazzo, zinc, cherry wood
21.5” x 43” x 1.25” (open)
21.5” x 21.5” x 2.5” (closed)
Photo courtesy of Ficus Interfaith
The newly minted experts handle terrazzo in a manner that harkens to the 1920s, when the invention of the electric grinder lowered terrazzo’s fabrication costs. Bush and Cohen solder strips of zinc or brass into cookie cutter – like forms that they lay within a mesh metal tray, into which a slurry of dyed cement and various aggregates is then poured. After setting, the composition undergoes grinding, polishing, and sealing. “The strain is very rewarding, because it matches the weight of our ideas,” Cohen says of the labor required of each artwork. Bush further comments that that process has helped the artists discern their individual expression from Ficus Interfaith: “There are limits to the line widths of the metal strips that we solder, there are limits to the dye sources. Those limitations make our two sets of hands disappear and allow us to create a third voice.”
And that voice is loud, as Bush and Cohen deliberately distinguish Ficus Interfaith from the anonymous artists and artisans that preceded them. For one thing, careful viewers will spot aggregates that are unique to the partnership. Whereas terrazzo has been embedded with stone chips, sand, and crushed concrete since its invention, Cohen says, “We smash our own glass, we collect deer bones from the woods, and we experiment with these materials as well as shells, peach pits, and oyster shells.” These ingredients are not only a personal signature — they also advocate to viewers to consume materials mindfully.
Exit Sign (2024)
Cementitious terrazzo, brass
10” x 14″ x 1.5”
Photo courtesy of Ficus Interfaith
A second distinction between Ficus Interfaith artwork and conventional terrazzo is plainer to see. Rebuffing the colorful swaths and classical patterns of Art Deco – era terrazzo, Bush and Cohen treat the medium as a canvas by fashioning their cookie-cutter inlays into attention-grabbing words and images.
Cohen explains that he and Bush carefully select representations that engage in dialogue with terrazzo’s millennia-spanning durability. “The inlays allow us to explore different themes of mythology and timekeeping,” he says. Tapped by a Los Angeles homeowner to floor a freestanding backyard office in 2021, Ficus Interfaith completed a medallion of Icarus to invoke LA’s short but grand history of ambitious visions and broken dreams. For Deli Gallery’s exhibit Earthly Pleasures two years later, the duo created a demountable medallion of the river nymph Daphne — a meditation on solid and liquid, among other readings. “Myths are like terrazzo; both have lasted a long time.”
While commissioned works typically employ time-honored motifs, “we’re trying to push into new territory with exhibition works,” Cohen continues. For these self-initiated pieces, Ficus Interfaith often questions which artifacts of contemporary culture will have the same longevity as the stories of ancient Greece. The 2024 sculpture Spongebob is one case in point. Another is the terrazzo-poured versions of the Bible and Infinite Jest completed that same year: the juxtaposition prompts viewers to consider which books they consider to be timeless expressions of human experience, and it also pokes a little fun at the idolization of David Foster Wallace that Bush and Cohen observe among their peers.
Holy Bible (2024)
Cementitious terrazzo
10” × 7″ × 1.75“
Courtesy of Ficus Interfaith
Terrazzo dates back at least to ancient Egypt, where it served as the basis for mosaic tiles. Since then the material has undergone waves of reinterpretation and popularity. Long before the electric grinder’s appearance, 16th-century masons covered Venice in terrazzo made from marble scraps, while in the more recent past terrazzo has been reinvented by designers Shiro Kuramata and Max Lamb. Only time will tell whether we’re living in a golden age of terrazzo on par with the Renaissance-era Venice or the Roaring Twenties. But if future historians deem it so, then the innovative artwork of Ficus Interfaith will certainly have played a role.
