Roee Rosen's Transgressive Art Explores Identity Through Humor and Discomfort

Roee Rosen, an Israeli artist based in Tel Aviv, debuted a performance piece at the 2018 Steirischer Herbst festival in Austria, featuring a stand-up comedian named Rosie Rosen who delivers offensive jokes blending Jewish identity with traumatic events like the 9/11 attacks. His ongoing project, 'Kafka for Kids,' adapts Franz Kafka's 'The Metamorphosis' into a children's television show interrupted by a lecture on Israeli military law, highlighting discriminatory policies against Palestinian minors. Rosen's work, spanning three decades, uses avatars such as the fictional Jewish painter Justine Frank and the Buried Alive Group to dismantle selfhood through humor, sex, and violence. Key works include 'Sweet Sweat' (2009), a novel attributed to Frank that explores masochism, and 'The Confessions of Roee Rosen' (2008), where undocumented workers recite his confessions. His video 'The Dust Channel' (2016) was shown at Documenta 14 in Kassel, Germany, critiquing globalization via a Dyson vacuum cleaner. Rosen's art often incorporates references to thinkers like Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, and André Breton, emphasizing bodily reactions like laughter or sweating as indicators of hidden truths. A group exhibition, 'Laughing / Lachen,' at Taxis – Palais Kunsthalle Tirol in Innsbruck, Austria, through March 15, 2020, features his work, as reported in the March 2020 issue of ArtReview.