Good Grief

Steven Cohen returns to South Africa to challenge and question norms through art and dance

- Bruce Dennill

France-based South African artist Steven Cohen recently presented his solo exhibition Put your heart under your feet…and walk! at Johannesburg’s Stevenson Gallery. The exhibition, in memory of the artist’s late partner and collaborator Elu, comprises one gallery full of sculptures – ballet shoes (Elu was a dancer) combined with a bewildering range of historical, fetish and artistic objects – and a second featuring two screens on which films of Cohen’s performance in an abattoir are screened.

The first video looks at the relative sterility of the process of taking life from the creatures being slaughtered. The second is anything but sterile, with Cohen literally immersing himself in the gore required to deliver food to supermarket shoppers. It is a brutally visceral statement about life and death and the unequal ratio of loss and benefit inherent in daily life generally, and across the range of living beings from humans to animals specifically.

Next month, at the 30th annual Dance Umbrella in Johannesburg, Cohen will stage the dance component of this work, in which he performs.

How are the gallery exhibition and the choreography for Put your heart under your feet…and walk! related?

Steven Cohen: It’s a visual installation using the same elements. When I am dancing, it is about the movement of the body in relation to and in addition to what is seen in the gallery.