Justine in transit

In 1984, Colette was invited to Berlin by the DAAD, Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (The German Academic Exchange Service), on a one-year scholarship (which, quite unusually, was extended for one more year due to her popularity in Germany). Feeling that she was starting to reach the end of her ongoing art installation Living Environment (the transformation, begun in 1972-1973, of her Pearl Street home into an artwork, or total environment, in which Colette’s style merged with the apartment’s) and stimulated by the prospects of new opportunities and experiences, Collette thus crossed the Atlantic. Colette remembered it all, decades later, in an interview with Karly Quadros (’Everything She Touches Turns To Gold: An Interview with Colette Lumiere’, AUTRE, 11 February 2025):

Sometimes I just like to give up. Surrender. You always want to plan your life, and then sometimes I find it’s best to surrender. So, I was really at that stage of my life, where my Living Environment had come to an end. I think I was ready to be dismantled. I lived in an artwork that was ongoing. It was very extreme, and I was part of that artwork. And there was another element, which was my landlord, who tried to throw me out from the beginning. So it was coming to a climax. And then I got this invitation to go to Berlin. How convenient! […] Berlin was a new beginning.

One way to ensure that ‘Berlin was a new beginning’ was by killing off Colette’s alter ego, Justine. Already ahead of her departure, a new character, Mata Hari and the Stolen Potatoes, was in the making. Colette recently told Swiss art curator, critic, and art historian Hans Ulrich Obrist (born 1968), in ‘COLETTE LUMIERE: “Fight terror with glamor”’, Fräulein Magazine, 2 December 2024:

Justine was created by Colette, the artist. And so were the other personas who all had a philosophy, a favourite color scheme and a special ‘look’. When creating them or my art, I often felt like a medium, compelled to visually manifest the messages I received. Justine was just one of the personas. […] Right before I left for Berlin I was with my friends [at the Danceteria Nightclub in New York], and we agreed that a new persona was needed for Berlin. We decided on the name Mata Hari - very mysterious. Berlin still had the wall back then. But I had to add something to be a new Mata Hari. What do Germans eat? Potatoes. Mata Hari was a persona I used to create my art in Berlin. She made her first public appearance arriving in a golden Volkswagen covered with golden potatoes for the opening of her installation at a night club.

The title of the work, Justine in transit, strongly suggests that it is closely related to this important transitional phase by which Colette reinvented herself from Justine to Mata Hari and the Stolen Potatoes. This assumption is further backed up by the fact that the work is dated ’83.84’, suggesting that it was begun in New York and finished after Colette had arrived in Berlin under the guise of Mata Hari and the Stolen Potatoes.

Firestorm Foundation acquired Justine in transit when it was included in the Company Gallery, New York, exhibition Everything She Touches Turns To Gold (16 January-1 March 2025). In their presentation of the exhibition, the gallery wrote the following about the exhibited works from this important phase of Colette’s extraordinary career:

Many of the paintings on view were created during the 1980s in Berlin, a period when Colette embodied the persona of Mata Hari and the Stolen Potatoes. This series epitomized Colette’s remarkable ability to transform the mundane into the extraordinary, by way of a subversive twist on the vamp aesthetic, channeling cultural icons like Theda Bara and Marlene Dietrich. […] The ethereal figures in these paintings serve not only as stand-ins for Colette herself but also as bold assertions of her commitment to embedding her presence within the traditionally male-dominated canon of art history. Through the use of soft, flowing fabrics and delicate hues, accented in glitter and painted in a style reminiscent of classical frescos, Colette reclaims and redefines conventional narratives. What might initially be perceived as stereotypical symbols of femininity are, in her hands, powerful instruments of subversion, challenging and reimagining the legacies of art history from her distinctly performative perspective. The delicate yet commanding presence of these figures encapsulates one of Colette’s enduring artistic pursuits: to dismantle rigid hierarchies and create spaces where femininity is not only celebrated but also empowered.

Signed and dated (lower right corner): ‘Colette 83.84’.

.Provenance

Company Gallery, New York, NY, U.S.A., Everything She Touches Turns To Gold, 16 January-1 March 2025.

Firestorm Foundation (acquired from the above).

Copyright Firestorm Foundation