This exhibition offers an unprecedented look at Steven Cohen’s artistic career, which has shaped the discourse of performance art in South Africa, France, and beyond. Known for his fearless exploration of identity, politics, and belonging, Cohen’s work interrogates themes of sexuality, spirituality, race, freedom, ethics, memory, and love. While engaging with universal concerns, his practice is always rooted in deeply personal narratives of love, loss, and resilience.
The title, Long Life, is a phrase of condolence in Jewish custom that honours those who have passed while offering hope and affirming that to live is a blessing. This sentiment resonates throughout Cohen’s work. At its core, Long Life speaks to compassion and indignation, belonging and loneliness, and the human connections that make life meaningful.
Comprising installations, performance documentation, objects, images, films, and ephemera, the exhibition presents a loosely chronological survey of Cohen’s life and work, coalescing around key relationships that have shaped his artistic journey.
From textile-based works of the late 1980s, to documentation of Cohen’s uninvited public interventions in the late 1990s and early 2000s, through to more recent performances conceived for the stage, the exhibition reflects the breadth of a profoundly influential career.
The exhibition is curated by Dr Anthea Buys, an independent curator, writer, and researcher based in South Africa.
