Tomás Cohen’s Artist-in-Residence project focused on writing a new poetry collection. Titled El sexo de los planetas (The Sex of the Planets), it comprises seven long poems, each named after a day of the week. The collection explores the influence of the seven planets that were visible to the naked eye in antiquity—from which the names of the days of the week derive—and the ways in which the observation of the heavens informed our understanding and measurement of time. The project required engaging with ancient sources, which Tomás consulted with the support of MPIWG research scholars.
As is customary in his transdisciplinary artistic process, Tomás initially conceived this collection through drawings and schemata inspired by sources such as the Orphic Hymns (a collection of ritual poems composed between the late Hellenistic and the early Roman era), al-Biruni’s Kitab al-tafhim li-awa’il sina‘at al-tanjim (Book of instruction in the elements of the art of astrology, 1029) and the Ghāyat al-Ḥakīm (better known as Picatrix, the title of its 13th century translation into Latin). The idea of structuring the collection around the planetary week finds precedent in Nizami Ganjavi’s Haft Peykar (1197), a classic of Persian poetry. These and other textual and visual sources were suggested by research scholars at the Institute. Tomás would like to thank Prof. Dr. Dagmar Schäfer, Dr. Jeffrey Kotyk, Dr. Aida Alavi, Dr. Razieh-Sadat Mousavi and Esther Chen for their invaluable support. The use of the Institute’s library, particularly its rare book collection, gave tangible form to his approach to writing as a way of inhabiting the source.
During his residency, Tomás participated actively in colloquiums, reading groups, and other Institute events. In his words, “the contact and consulting with researchers of the MPIWG, utilizing the Institute’s library and open-access images from the Visualization of the Heavens Image Database informed and inspired my artistic research during the residency.” On December 12, 2025, Tomás gave a performative lecture at the Institute with Chilean actor and musician Salvador Burrell. To conclude his residency, he held recording sessions for musical adaptations of his poems, featuring Burrell and research scholar and musician Alejandra Borea. With the kind support of the Institute’s technical team (especially Hartmut Kern), these recordings will culminate in a debut album featuring Tomás’s poetry-based songs. His planetary-week book will be published in Spanish alongside an English translation. In a video interview with Dr. Jeffrey Kotyk, Tomás describes the project in more detail and showcases footage of his artistic process.
Photograph showing part of Tomás's creative process.