ASHES AND OUTRAGE

BITTER SUITE (1993)

Steven Cohen’s early work involved combining silkscreened images from magazines and other sources on canvas, which he later used to upholster chairs, often in faux antique styles associated with apartheid-era suburbia.

LIVING ART (1998)

Cohen’s performance debut, dressed as the very earliest incarnation of the “Ugly Girl” character he developed, flirted with Afrikaner homophobia during rugby matches and similarly charged masculine events. In related performances, such as Patriotic Drag in 1998, he attended an AWB rally at Fort Klapperkop commemorating the Great Trek.

TASTE (1999)

In possibly still one of Cohen’s most shocking and controversial performances, he “drinks his own douche”, which he expelled into a Victorian bedpan during a performance to the soundtrack of To life (to life, l’chaim) from Fiddler on the Roof.

CHANDELIER (2001)

Cohen, dressed in impossibly high heels and a corset rigged up with a chandelier to make a kind of tutu, tottered around a squatter camp under the M1 highway during a forced eviction.

GOLGOTHA (2005)

Wearing high heels made of real human skulls (found in a trendy décor store in New York’s SoHo), this made-for-video performance shows Cohen walking through the streets of New York in a searing exploration of consumerism, mortality and grief after his brother’s death by suicide.

COQ/COCK (2013)

Cohen tied a live rooster to his penis and paraded, mimicking the movement of a chicken, in front of the Eiffel Tower dressed in a feather headdress. He was arrested and convicted for sexual exhibitionism.

ELU’S ASHES (2017)

After the untimely death of Cohen’s life partner and collaborator, choreographer Elu Kieser, during a performance Cohen ate some of Elu’s ashes in an act of provocation and ritual mourning.