Colette:"There is no place like home", Florence, Italy. 1974.
(with Dakota Jackson), image copyright Colette.

Colette (USA)

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 that transform art into a space she lives in and life into a never-ending performance.

In "Street Works", from the early 1970s, she 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 lives in 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 myth. She creates tableaux vivants of legendary people such as Jeanne d’Arc to subvert the culturally and historically standardized representations of women. Her "Showroom Works" are extensions of this role-play in public space. One after the other, she takes on new identities, celebrating the death of the old and the resurrection of the new persona, such as Justine, Mata Hari and Lumiere, her current identity.

Colette: installation in the exhibition. Photograph: Andreas Süß