[dropcap]I[/dropcap]N a recently published interview with Dazed magazine, actor Shia LaBeouf told writer Aimee Cliff he was raped by a woman during his performance art show “#IAMSORRY” in February. Over the weekend, two artists who collaborated with LaBeouf to produce the performance art piece confirmed LaBeouf was sexually assaulted at the Cohen Gallery in Los Angeles.
LeBeouf initiated the rather unorthodox interview, which took place entirely via e-mail. In it, he wrote:
One woman who came with her boyfriend, who was outside the door when this happened, whipped my legs for ten minutes and then stripped my clothing and proceeded to rape me… There were hundreds of people in line when she walked out with dishevelled hair and smudged lipstick. It was no good, not just for me but her man as well. On top of that my girl was in line to see me, because it was Valentine’s Day and I was living in the gallery for the duration of the event – we were separated for five days, no communication. So it really hurt her as well, as I guess the news of it travelled through the line. When she came in she asked for an explanation, and I couldn’t speak, so we both sat with this unexplained trauma silently. It was painful.
LaBeouf took to the Cohen, possibly as penance, for plagiarizing the Daniel Clowes comic “Justin M. Damiano” for his film “Howard Cantour.com.” “I made a short film with another person’s (Daniel Clowes’) ideas, took it to Cannes and never properly accredited him,” LaBeouf told Cliff.
It was shortly after LaBeouf was outed for plagiarizing that he wore a bag on his head that read “I am not famous anymore” to the Berlin Film Festival. He issued a series of apologies on Twitter, all of which were apologies previously given by other celebrities. In January, he announced he was retiring from public life.
In his show at the Cohen, LaBeouf’s face was still obscured by a paper bag, though the eye holes were big enough to see that his eyes were red and watery. In an antechamber gallery visitors encountered before coming face-to-face with LaBeouf, a number of objects were available: a whip from “Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull,” in which he acted, and a model transformer, as LaBeouf starred in “Transformers” until he walked away or was dismissed from the franchise. According to the Daily Beast, there were also Hershey’s Kisses, a Clowes book, a bowl of tweets about LaBeouf’s plagiarizing, a bottle of cologne and a wrench.
