Performance artist Steven Cohen’s latest installation BOUDOIR at Le Centre Pompidou, Paris, 24,25,26th November 2022, Théâtre Vidy-Lausanne until 16 November.
Artist arrested for tying a rooster to his penis in Paris
Steven Cohen was found guilty of “sexual exhibitionism” in 2014 after performing “Penis Rooster Dance” also called ‘Coq/Cock’ in front of the Eiffel Tower, including a group of nuns, but the Paris court did not impose a penalty, as there had been no formal complaint and the artist had not engaged in a sexual act with the rooster.
No cock was harmed in the incident and the rooster, named ‘Franck’, went on to live “a totally happy life in Normandy.” “He won’t end up being eaten, like every other animal in France,” Cohen said. “Franck was chosen for the performance on Trocadero Plaza “because it’s the emblem of France.”
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Performance art or exhibitionism?
“To some people what I do is magical and to others what I do is criminal,” Cohen said.
“It’s actually the very last thing I thought would ever happen in Paris and in France, which is a country that is supposedly a place where we make art. It’s supposed to love art.”
“For me it had nothing to do with sexuality. It has to do with gender identity and politics of the body.” Cohen said.
His work brings to light that which lies on the margins of society, beginning with his own identity as a gay, Jewish, white, South African man. Far from being narcissistic, the staging of his body is influenced by his own story and history and constitutes a means to exploring the flaws and grace of humanity.
“Art is the last area we have to talk about difficult things,” he says. “I am not pleading guilty to anything because I am not guilty … I’m insisting on my right to make art in a way I want to make it.”
BOUDOIR – “The boudoir is traditionally a room within a bourgeois house reserved for feminine conversations, between living room and bedroom – the inverted double of the predominately masculine sphere of public and social spaces – a space whose easy, even contemptuous reputation Sade recast, making it a place of new-found and affirmed liberty through the drawing together of sexuality and philosophy, intimacy and a social critique of restrictive dogmas and powers” according to Cohen’s website.
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From a feminist’s view point: “The advent of performance art produced a tide of women artists, many of whom were not content with starring in their own show without stripping. Since the 1960s, when Carolee Schneeman took off her clothes to perform art in New York basements, I have wondered what the connection might be between art and exhibitionism, and why it was that so many of the nude female performance artists had beautiful bodies. Could it have been coincidence? Even Helen Chadwick, a serious artist, took pride in displaying her own wonderfully elegant young body when somebody else’s would have done,” wrote Germain Greer in a 2008 essay ‘The Connection Between Art And Exhibitionism’.
Helen Chadwick was known for “challenging stereotypical perceptions of the body in elegant yet unconventional forms”. Binary oppositions was a strong theme in Chadwick’s work; seductive/repulsive, male/female, organic/man-made.
This performative-installation is conceived as the culmination of precedent works created by the performer and visual artist, born in 1962. Steven Cohen will be present in the space, alone, as much host as a piece of furniture among other furnishings.
He will welcome the audience into an intimate space he has created and with which he will interact: a scenographic and decorated place, a chamber of memories as well as an elegant old-word salon containing diverse objects and pieces of furniture (his visual artworks include furniture he has transformed, adapted and reimagined), paintings and candelabras, graphic works and animal statuaries.
His work brings to light that which lies on the margins of society, beginning with his own identity as a gay, Jewish, white, South African man. Far from being narcissistic, the staging of his body is influenced by his own story and history and constitutes a means to exploring the flaws and grace of humanity.
By instigating interventions on stage or in public spaces, he creates breaches in the day-to-day and in the spirit as well; not to trip people up but rather in order to finish with preconceived certitudes and together face the indifference currently gaining ground within our societies.
Performer, choreographer and visual artist, Steven Cohen has orchestrated interventions in public places, in art galleries or on stages, notably for the Festival d’Automne, at the Center Pompidou in Paris, at the ImPulsTanz Vienna International Dance Festival, at the National Arts Festival in Makhanda, at the Théâtre du Rond-Point in Paris, in Montpellier Danse, at the Festival d’Avignon, for the Munich Opera Festival at the Bavarian State Opera, at the Escena Contemporánea Festival in Madrid, at the Bozar in Brussels, at the Oktoberdans festival in Bergen , at the Canadian Stage in Toronto. He has participated in residencies at the Baryshnikov Arts Center, and the Center for Performance Research in New York.
Steven Cohen will appear at Le Centre Pompidou, Paris, 24,25,26 November 2022, Théâtre Vidy-Lausanne until 16 November. Details here: https://steven-cohen.com/en/steven-cohen-artist/
Performance artist Steven Cohen’s latest installation BOUDOIR at Le Centre Pompidou, Paris, 24,25,26th November 2022
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