Entries (RSS) Steven Cohen: ‘Chandelier’
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2nd September 2008 | Other items by Jacqueline |
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Video 7 Steven Cohen spent several months in 2001 reconfiguring a wrought iron chandelier into a wearable tutu in a studio in Newtown, Johannesburg; a short walk from a squatter camp under the M1 highway. During this time, the artist made a point of walking through the informal settlement regularly, and when the chandelier was ready, he chose this location for its inaugural performance. When the artist arrived wearing his chandelier, teetering on fetish black heels, with a bare bum and his face painted, he discovered men yielding crowbars employed by the government to evict the squatters and destroy their makeshift homes. Cohen’s performance was not planned to coincide with the forced removal of this community. However, the event was to some degree fortuitous for the artist because it made the contradictions of the ‘new’ South Africa, which he wished to expose, even starker. “I’m messing with a society that is more shocked by the violence of my self-presentation as monster/queer/unrepresentable or whatever than by the actual violence they live with every day. It’s almost as if, because I’m alive and present, I’m more real and more threatening than reality” (Interview with Brenda Atkinson, Mail & Guardian, August 1997). Steven Cohen is a pioneering artist whose work provocatively confronts issues of identity. Best known for his live performances, Cohen appears not only on stage and in galleries but also, uninvited, in public spaces. His work deals with outsider identity, using his own and others’ bodies to create ‘living art’ that references sculpture, contemporary dance, drag and performance art. These events are designed to force his viewers into recognising him and ultimately accepting him for what he is: a Jewish faggot. Beyond the personal, his work is a call for the recognition of all those outside the confines of straight society. Other articles relating to this artist: Disguise: The Art of Attracting and Deflecting Attention |
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