In a Conversation With Chen Cohen about How to Die Beautiful
Featuring Chen Cohen Words by Nastasia Khmelnitski
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Eye-stopping imagery of the body, the struggle with day-to-day and its interpretation into art, the almost stripped out of an emotional component work is presented by Chen Cohen. Chen opens a door and invites the viewer to get acquainted, even if only from a distance, with her experience, thoughts, and creative processes. Her work is part of the constantly developing form originating from performance art filmed on a video recorder changing the shape to a carefully chosen frame to be xeroxed, photographed, and finally developed in the darkroom, then to be transformed yet again reaching the gallery space. Her work is a triangle relationship of Chen as an artist, Chen as a model, and Chen as a person.
The relationship between each facet is constantly developing to be eventually set for observation to the unknown viewer. The strength stemming from the authenticity of the artist bringing her experience, her pain, her body, and self to the artwork moves thoughts and feelings of the observer, the silent participant trying to interpret what they see to understand the effect the work has on them.
Chen Cohen is a multi-disciplinary artist, a photographer, and a performance artist born in Tzfat in the North of Israel into a family of four siblings. She gained her MFA from Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Israel; received a Jerard Levi Prize for the encouragement of photographic creativity in 2020; and presented her work in multiple group and solo exhibitions, with her recent one How to Die Beautiful (2021) displayed in CCA Tel Aviv, curated by Noam Gal.
For this interview, I met Chen in her apartment in Tel Aviv. We sat in her living room, her work printed and hanging on the walls, creating a feeling of a studio or an exhibition space. Her ‘adopted’ cat, Yona, was slowly pacing in the room, finally deciding to sit behind Chen on the chair; we started speaking about How to Die Beautiful. We speak about her hometown and her teenage experience, her path towards becoming an artist, and the shift in her perception to the form her work will be taking with developments in the future.
‘The thinness is very connected to my work, in elements such as thin paper, empty walls in exhibition spaces, the thin body — it's very much connected to my gaze and experience.’
The Story
NK Hi Chen, let’s start by speaking about you. Where were you born? How do you think the place where you grew up influenced who you are today?
CC
I grew up in Katzrin, born into a family of four siblings (I have a bigger sister and two younger brothers). Katzrin is a small city in the North of Israel in Golan Heights. I am the only child born with regular delivery, while all my siblings were delivered with C-Section. I used to say that a lot when I was little. I’m also the only child born in Tzfat, while the rest were born in Poria, south of Tiberias. I was born after 4.5 years of my mother trying to get pregnant. She wanted a boy... we spoke about it recently. After less than two years, she gave life to another child, my brother.
It was a nice childhood. I wasn’t good at school. From a young age, it was hard for me to be in the system. When I was growing up, I studied theater. I left school to study theater at Tel-Hai, where I spent a year (out of two). At 16, I found myself in a hospital and had been there for quite a long time. I think this is something deeply connected to my work. I have a strong connection with hospitals; it feels ‘at home.’ During this year, the hospital became like a home to me. Since then, each time I was released from a hospital, I found myself getting back there, I guess because it was something I knew well. Between 17-21, I was back and forth with hospitalization. For a long time, I believed, and I still think, that I was born religious. And this religiosity, religious behavior, connection to God brought with it also Anorexia. I think I was already born anorexic in a way. The thinness is very connected to my work, in elements such as thin paper, empty walls in exhibition spaces, the thin body — it's very much connected to my gaze and experience.
NK Is it something you understand only by looking back at your work, or perhaps this is one of the elements you work consciously on by adding it to your creative processes?
CC
I never create, having an idea in the back of my mind. I realized this looking back, and today I understand it when I see my work. Back in the day, I turned this into a romantic gaze. Today, I find no more romanticism. Rather I see a disease.
NK What led to this shift in perception? Why do you look at it differently?
CC
Because this is a situation I inhabit, I’m closer to this state. This thinness that finds itself in my work, I wear it on a daily basis. I feel it holds danger. This danger brings in an element that recurs in my work, whether it’s a ball coming at my back, the burn, or even my day-to-day. I feel that my daily life is dangerous. Every transition from one situation to another holds an element of danger. The danger recurs in my work as it is very existential in my case. The movement is dangerous, and because it limits me, the experience...
You asked me if I think of thinness before I create or during the creation process — so, no. Instead, now I have this new bodily feeling of expansion, of growth, and this feeling might bring a different kind of work, different physical material instead of the thin paper I’m using today. Perhaps, a thicker material (‘basary’ - i.e., fleshy). I use the word ‘meat’ (‘basar’) a lot. It’s a desire to announce (‘lebaser’) myself, whether in bringing more thickness to my work, which I still don’t fully understand.
NK This is a beginning of a new thought.
CC
Yes, and it comes from the body, from the physical need to have more ‘flesh.’
‘Often, before I start working on a project, on an image, or I want to invite a creation, I ask what my body requires or needs. Then, in a simple manner, I use this need and embody it.’
The Body
NK The topic of the body comes as one of the things that led me to an idea of the body that dictates your work. It seems there is a triangle of you as a person, you as an artist, and you as a subject in your work. Those are different gazes. And you are the person who eventually affects each of those gazes, deciding who you are in your work, in your day-to-day, and in the moment of creation. How do the physical body and your thoughts affect the process of creation, your daily existence, or the work when you look at it and interpret it?
CC
This is very existential — all the stages at which a work ‘breathes,’ whether it’s here at my home or in an external space, has a profound effect on my behavior. Often, before I start working on a project, on an image, or I want to invite a creation, I ask what my body requires or needs. Then, in a simple manner, I use this need and embody it. If I have a yeast skin rash on the back, then I need someone to rub my back because I cannot reach there. If my body needs strength, then I’ll apply force to it. If I need to get fit, I’ll lift a person. Everything is about the need and about crossing a line. I always cross the line. If someone rubs my back, then it’ll continue for half an ho
NK And if you’re hugging someone, then it’s until your hands fall.
CC
Yes, or until the other person can't handle it any longer. But I will work with a watch. I am asking what duration of time my partner or I can manage. Stillness and being able to handle something for a long time happens a lot in my work. This is a practice that I bring from being a model. Practice that I’m very good at, standing without movement. So, I also bring it to my creation. The connection to the body deals with the day-to-day because I experience the world in a very physical way, but also in a way that is disconnected from the body.
As you said, there's a triangle. I usually don't refer to the images as myself rather as ‘she.’ There’s an extensive disconnection or perhaps even a connection with this body that is an object. My body is an object, and as such, is not only mine. It might be that often this causes me to experience a disconnection from it. This 'object body' can create a lot of things like connections, shapes, images. And it can create infinitely versus my body, which constantly feels the end, that it can break apart in a moment.
It feels that if the body transfers to a photograph, then a photograph can stay there even after myself. In this way, I create a memory of the body to which I don't feel connected. I love the fact that my body appears in a lot of painter’s work in which I took part. This way, I make a human connection through the body and relationships. I understand the power this 'object' has, the body, which can be an object that is not only mine.
‘The body is very connected to my technique. The technique of stopping a frame in a video is like performing art. There is a continuity that has a movement, and then I pause a moment out of it.’
The Technique
NK I love how you speak about performance art, being conscious of the time, and the work that is finite and eventually exhibited in a gallery. On the one hand, people can view it in this space, but this is just one second a person can see; and on the other hand, this second is a whole narrative with a beginning, middle, and end. But we as viewers can see only this one point in time and imagine the rest.
CC
That's true. The body is very connected to my technique. The technique of stopping a frame in a video is like performing art. There is a continuity that has a movement, and then I pause a moment out of it. In a video, no moment will get lost. You can see it frame by frame.
One of my biggest fears is... it’s about transitions. I noticed that transition is the moment I’m scared of. In the transition between life and death, the moment that bothers me is the transition — the moment which I won’t remember. And in a video, nothing gets lost. You have all the moments that the eye can’t see, the moment when something can happen, and you won’t understand how it happened. If this moment is documented, you have this point of the transition.
There is a close connection to my daily life and the transitions of separation. It was also the idea for How to Die Beautiful. It is this moment of transition between being awake and asleep. I'm separated from the moment I will be found, the moment that is afterward. So, before going to sleep, I will make sure that my surrounding space is beautiful and tidy as I am passing to a different world. When I leave my home, I know that I am transitioning to a different world, and if I do not return and someone visits my place, I’m preoccupied with how they will find my belongings. So the camera catches all those moments that I might not see. Recently, I had a conversation about frames that look like joints. My body and its form have to do with segments of the film, the material from which I take the frame, and the segment I choose.
NK Yes, that’s a fascinating concept; the frames, not perceived by the eye, which you cannot notice until you freeze the video and choose the right moment.
CC
I think that I don’t film the decisive moment. I cannot do it with a camera because my body won’t allow it, for example, the act of holding the camera or my rhythm caused by the inflammation that I carry in my body. I have a certain rhythm, a certain breath, a thought process that makes it physically very hard to catch the moment with still photography. I capture the moments from film footage. I know if I document action with video, I will catch the moment.
‘The thought of dying in a way that is pathetic highly affects my day-to-day. I am very cautious not to die in a way that will bring a certain memory or a shadow on all my life, all my experiences. And this fear of death brings me to control my daily life.’
How to Die Beautiful
NK Let’s speak about How to Die Beautiful. Where did the name come from?
CC
The name arrived later in the process. The first title was Room #1. Back then, I was working on the project while being in Mamuta Art Research Center in Jerusalem. I created a souvenir with images of one of the rooms in the hotel in which there were certain occurrences. The sleeping or dead body is found in different situations and different poses and postures. But, what I was looking for was the most beautiful posture one could find me in. How to Die Beautiful is a guide to the right posture, which holds beauty and is also the last memory.
The thought of dying in a way that is pathetic highly affects my day-to-day. I am very cautious not to die in a way that will bring a certain memory or a shadow on all my life, all my experiences. And this fear of death brings me to control my daily life, not allowing me to be free, as all the time I’m worried about this beauty that should happen.
NK It seems that there is a certain finality that you don't accept as there’s always movement, the passing of time, and occurrences happening after the moment you show the viewer. The danger comes from the moment that might bring a halt, the stop, which is not something you planned.
CC
Yes, something I don't have control over.
NK Not the frame you chose.
CC
It has a lot to do with control. It’s as if I am managing something that will ultimately take over me. It controls a lot of my behavior in life and not in death. However, there’s a notion close to being born again all the time. I get this feeling when I’m before the camera, apart from the moments that could kill me... With each movement I make in front of the camera, I get a feeling that this might be the last action.
A lot of behaviors in my creation are very passive. I allow the world to penetrate me and be out of control as it seems. However, then I do something active, I put a camera before myself, and it can become a sign that perhaps this will be the last moment, something that will kill me. Then, I do it again and again and again because I continue to breathe, and my body continues to live, and the camera continues to run.
NK How to Die Beautiful is a project that grew to become an exhibition at CCA — Center for Contemporary Art, where we met after I saw your work (which made me breathless). The exhibition contains your different projects. What was the process of preparing for the exhibition? All the images are moments you chose, frames that you froze. For example, the work, Notre Dame, and the decision to divide it into multiple images and print it in this manner. How did you decide to present it in the gallery?
CC
I’m in a very long and close relationship with the curator, Dr. Noam Gal. I tend to surrender myself to people I believe in, to their intentions. Listening to Noam and learning from him, I let go and surrender. This is a comfortable place to be, knowing there’s an outside eye that can organize the garden, the space through his eyes. And I trust him. This is a collaboration. It went from the stage when I created the work to us going through my work from all the years. Then it passed to Noam's part and gaze. I transferred it to him, and then it was on him and the way he received it. The work is no longer mine only, it becomes ours.
Regarding Notre Dame, the divided frames are something that came from the studio, the work at home. When I want to see the image at scale, I use my home printer. This technique appeared out of a need to be at home, not giving another pair of hands or eyes to touch it. And then I bring it to the public. Noam wanted to add this place, home, into the exhibition.
The Gaze
NK I read Noam's afterword in the catalog for the exhibition. He brings a lot of his gaze and perception of your work. We spoke of control, providing someone the possibility to organize your work from their interpretation of the world. In this case, you need to trust them to the extent you can transfer control and allow them to organize your work.
CC
We spoke about it the last time we met, about my desire to remove responsibility. Also, with work, I like when other people tell me what to do. I like being a 'doll' in a way before the other’s gaze; it makes it easier for me. It’s not a doll in a bad sense. I create something, then I release control and give it to someone I trust, so it makes it easier for me.
In those situations, I lose control completely. A lot of times, my life becomes balanced in this way. I look for places where I can remove responsibility, like hospitals. I long for someone to feed me, hold me, and take care of me. And it's the same with my work. Noam, for example, is someone I’m curious to see how the work passes through him. It’s a whole new world from which I learn about my work through his knowledge and sensibility. Noam is an expert in the History of Art and the History of Photography.
NK So, it becomes a tool by which you can discover yourself through the gaze of the other.
CC
I discover intentions I never knew about. I discovered other artists who became a family. I discovered many things that were never my intention, and I’m happy that the work continues to live through the gaze of the other. My work presented in the exhibition is from the past 7-8 years out of which Noam was there for the last four years. When I create something or am inside an action or occurrence in a video, I know that Noam will see it. His gaze is already there when I create. This is an integral relationship.
NK It seems it was important that he was the person to curate the project as perhaps you wouldn’t accept someone else’s gaze.
CC
During this time, there were other gazes. When I was working on filming the caregivers, or Notre Dame, there were other curators, but Noam was also there. I communicated and worked with other curators, but Noam’s gaze always accompanied me. With this exhibition, something new was created. All the work that passed through his gaze became one piece in one space.
NK A kind of decoding that was also right for you because of the relationship beyond the work, the understanding.
CC
Yes. Noam studied me, and I learned through him and about him. The activity we created during the exhibition, for example, the workshop about falling and the workshop about standing, came from Noam's idea. Those ideas came from his gaze at my work through which he discovered to me something that my body knows, something to experience. This constant devotion to each other is of very high significance in the exhibition. I always say it’s our exhibition.
‘I understand how the gaze is important and how my life is managed by the gaze whether it’s God, the camera, my family, or friends. These are all different types of circles that accompany me. I am always observed. I think this is what pushes me to action and what bothers me at the same time.’
The Moment
NK I would like to finish the conversation by closing the circle with a certain memory (a frame), which connects you to the decision to create and become an artist.
CC
I think that it took me time to understand that I perform before the camera. I remember I used to study Theater, and the act I was responsible for at the end of the year was to stand on a stage and scream. I never knew how to act or speak. I only knew how to bring my body. I remember wearing white clothes standing on the stage and screaming. Today looking back, I know that I don't know how to act. I know how to bring form, voice, and body.
I understand how the gaze is important and how my life is managed by the gaze whether it’s God, the camera, my family, or friends. These are all different types of circles that accompany me. I am always observed. I think this is what pushes me to action and what bothers me at the same time: the place in which I'm always observed. With my work, I try to create a very accurate observation of this body, but I also choose how to act due to the knowledge that I’m being observed. It constantly defines my morality.
Next steps
NK And the classic question, what’s next?
CC
I finished working on a duo exhibition with Shay Zilberman curated by Ilanit Konopny that is currently presented at the Artists’ Studios in Jerusalem. Then, I’m going for three months to Hamburg for a residency. Oh, and I spoke with you before about the Sanatorium, in between, I’d like to... remove responsibility, to get well.
