Chen Cohen

Artist Statement:

My practice hovers around rights of healing. I invent rituals, create situations, hijack existing frameworks to my own needs and establish collaborations with fellow artists and patients, in an all encompassing attempt to capture the elusive state of health and wellness, of taking charge of my own body.

Gauntness, illness and the fragility of the body are subjects I deal with through my work, in both subject and materiality.

In my work process I submerge myself in the idea I’m researching and it enters every possible aspect of my personal life. I create these rituals because they make me feel like I can take control. I find that rituals are an inherent part of our daily lives; eating, brushing our teeth, walking the dog, sleeping, and so on. By designing my own secular worship practices, I’m creating support structures for surviving the mundane.

The camera acts as a witness to this process. It’s my observer, transcriber, registrar, a watchful eye. The camera records an accumulation of moments, an ongoing duration from which I choose those which are worthy.

My works are the process of their making. From my actions and performances, I accumulate moments and materials which I use in the creation of the exhibition space. There, they take their final form: videos of long-duration performances, Xerox prints, manipulated photographs. Some I grab out of a video-drawing documenting a longer action. The video ensures that no moment is missed, allowing me to choose a specific image for the way it purifies and summarizes the essence of a gesture. Some are manipulated still photos that I take after a long, meticulous preparation for the event of their taking. Objects that I make for a specific action can enter the space, or they may become the source material for a new image. I create thin environments, seemingly weightless but durable, made to bear the consequences of the actions they now archive.

During the past couple of years, I have been inviting people into my practice -- fellow artists and patients -- to act as my healers. It is an exercise in mutuality, as well as control. For example, in “Patience” (2019) a project I did during my residency at the Cite, Paris, I have been playing the patient in order to get well. In reaction to the architectural realities of the space, its height, its window, the view from it - I devised ritualistic performances for my existence in it. During my stay I invited people to perform acts on me which I choreographed, such as cover me in casts or move my bed (with me in it) around, away from the window. From the documentary material I re-imagined the room, its walls and its scenery, recreating the space as I was still in it through the use of large scale printed images, holding within them the essence of the performative acts.