Yve Laris Cohen: Conservation

Yve Laris Cohen creates installations and performances that challenge the conventions of dance and visual art. His work uses elements of theatrical architecture—walls, curtains, rigging systems, and sprung floors—and considers the everyday labor that goes into constructing, handling, and maintaining them. These materials transform over time, whether from physical deterioration, active repair, or changing status from architecture into artwork and back again. Drawing connections between structural damage and bodily illness, the artist stages narratives of trauma and care, conflict and support, vulnerability and dependency.

For this new installation in the Kravis Studio, Laris Cohen will repurpose the remains of the Doris Duke Theatre (originally named the Studio/Theatre), which was destroyed in 2020 by a fire at Jacob’s Pillow, a historic dance site in Becket, Massachusetts. By bringing architectural structures from the fire’s aftermath into MoMA’s performance space, Studio/Theater raises questions about what constitutes a theater and how these spaces are themselves fragile and dependent. In a series of performances, the artist will harness the event of the fire to explore approaches to conserving and preserving both material objects and live art forms. The exhibition aims to expand the parameters of dance as a discipline, inviting us to think of the chemical transformation, transportation, and decay of performance architecture as forms of choreography.