COLETTE

Born in Tunisia, Colette lived in France and in Germany before settling down in the United States.

Today she lives and works in New York. Colette began her career in the 1970’s; she initially used several media in her works: installations, performances, videos, collages, photography, drawing, paintings. She is an important player in the New York artistic scene where she regularly shows her art, as she does in Germany. Colette participated in La Biennale de Montréal in 2002, presenting a large installation where the past and the present overlapped.

As a pioneer of performance art, she directs using her body and her history, attracting attention to the role of women in contemporary society and more especially the role of the female artist.

Creating fictitious characters with which she can identify, she creates “living art” in which she poses as Mata Hari, Justine de Sade, or in the style of Manet’s Olympia. Thus she disrupts the line between her private life and her professional life as an artist to transform herself into an icon, a glamour star and sometimes a provocatrice.

The artwork The Art of Dying is a photocopy of an article from Death Magazine, describing her performance It Re-appear in 1977 at Cucalon Gallery, New York. Colette staged her own death and rebirth in the guise of a new character.

Colette The Art of Dying (Death Magazine)
1978
Black and white photocopy of the article published in Death, September 1978, p.16 and 17, mounted on foamboard
38,5 cm x 61 cm
Signed at the bottom, on the foamboard : Colette a.k.a Justine-Colette is Dead – series – NY – 1978
2000$

To learn more about the artist :
http://www.colettetheartist.com
 
 
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