south african artist steven cohen is most noted for creating confrontational public interventions, through his provocation and physical embodiment of what is different / strange/ dangerous he highlights discrepancies in modern social ethics where the interactive responses of viewers becomes part of the narrative.
the particular work : chandelier confronts political and humanitarian issues in a ‘new’ south africa, the issue of displacement and other contradictions were accentuated by the inadvertent co-inciding of a forced removal of the community that took place at the squatter camp on the same day… this heightened emotive quality of the work resulted in it making a lasting impression on me…
in his own words: 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.
CHANDELIER from Theatre Auditorium de Poitiers on Vimeo.
