Colette, Street Works, 1971-79
Colette
Street Works

Colette has been living in New York since the 1970s. She is an artist who embodies the fusion of art and life. She plays with roles and changes identities in radical ways in order to transform art into a space for living and to alter life into a never-ending performance.

artist's website: www.colettetheartist.com

In the performance Street Works, Colette uses texts and coded systems of signs to mark roads and intersections in ritualistic actions. Her signature later appears on all of the places she has visited. Colette inhabits luxurious, theatrical environments draped in silk where she presents herself naked or in mannered, baroque costumes. Her work and life stand for the creation of a female identity, oscillating between affirmation and subversion. As an alternative to the traditional stereotype of the male genius, the artist actively turns her own biography into a myth. She creates tableaux vivants of legendary people such as Joan of Arc to subvert the culturally and historically standardised representations of women. She takes on new identities one after the other, celebrating the death and the birth of each persona, such as Justine, Mata Hari and Lumière, her current identity.

Courtesy Maison Lumière
Document media
Slides (print reproductions)

Issue date
1971-1979

Tags
femininity, his/herstory, inscription, public space, roleplay, trash