Lost in a fire in November 2020, the Doris Duke Theater is featured as part of Yves Lalisse Cohen: Studio Theater, a new installation commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City. Currently on display at MoMA’s Marie-Josée and Henry Kravis Studio until January 1, 2023, installation and performance artist Yves Larise Cohen uses the remnants of the theater to explore what theater is and what these spaces are. How fragile and interdependent itself. Yves Laris Cohen: Studio Theater by Martha Joseph, Phyllis Ann, Walter Boten Assistant Curators for Media and Performance, and Mae Makki (Assistant Curator, Media and Performance Department, Museum of Modern Art, New York) Organized. Performances are produced by producer Lizzie Goffin, assistant performance coordinator Jessie Gold, and assistant performance coordinator Olivia Rousey (MoMA’s Performance and Live Program).
Pamela Tugge, Executive and Artistic Director of Jacobs Pillow, said: “Two sections of the wall that survived the fire are installed in the exhibition space alongside other objects that survived the reconstruction. It is astonishing and very moving to see.”The spectator is offered a space to mingle with the bones of a place that has been enlivened by artists and spectators for thirty years. It is a place of reflection and tragic beauty.” It is a space of
In addition to the installations, the Studio/Theater consists of two performance events titled Preservation and Conservation that alternate every Wednesday at 8:00 pm during the exhibition. The Preservation, which was created in part during his 2021 Pillow Lab Residency at Jacob’s Pillow, includes ex-Jacob’s His Pillow Executive Liz, his director, his Thompson and Pillow’s current Preservation, his It features multiple performers associated with Pillow, including director Norton Owen. In 2021, Laris Cohen will further develop both studio/theater installations and performances through his residency at Jacobs Research His Pillow Archives.
“This exhibition is a poetic meditation on the afterlife of performance and the way all organic and inorganic matter changes and decays,” Joseph said. “Installations and performances ask us to consider the fragility of objects, bodies and our own cultural institutions.”
Laris Cohen creates installations and performances that challenge conventions in dance and the visual arts. His work uses elements of theater architecture (walls, curtains, rigging systems, sprung floors) and considers the daily labor involved in their construction, handling and maintenance. These materials change over time, whether through physical deterioration, active repairs, or changes in condition from architecture to artwork. Previous exhibitions by Laris Cohen have looked to damaged sets or defunct theater buildings to shed light on the question of value in the respective economies of art and performance. Sometimes portraying the relationship between structural damage and physical ailments, artists stage stories of trauma and care, conflict and support, vulnerability and dependence.
