Steven Cohen
For Steven Cohen, the intimate is radically political. The performer, who describes himself as “South African, white, Jewish and homosexual”, meticulously digs through attics, as he does with his past, looking for objects, forms and materials that compose, on the stage or in his films, a world that is both poetic and militant. Far from being narcissistic, his stagings of his body and his own history constitute the support for an exploration of the shortcomings and graces of humanity. With his ultra-sophisticated make-up and eccentric costumes that reveal more than they conceal, Steven Cohen disguises himself, or rather metamorphoses himself into a creature as disturbing as it is colourful. Appearing is a fundamental gesture of his art: as a chandelier in a Johannesburg township, perched on heels made of skulls in the heart of Wall Street in Golgotha, naked and tattooed with stars of David for a performance in the courtyard of the Musée de la résistance in Lyon. Erupting on the stage or in the public space, he creates a breach in our daily life and our spirit, not to make us stumble but to force us to stop. To face, together, the indifference that is making headway in our societies. The Festival d'Avignon is inviting him for the first time.
RB, April, 2012