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15
What is the role of technique in your practice? In particular are there any constraints or rules that you follow when creating?
There are always some external constraints in place, usually relating to either time or finances. I’m a teacher as well as an artist, so the time I can spend in the studio is limited and I find I need to be very organized in what I plan to do and my approach to it, while still allowing enough time for the painting or image to shift and evolve as I am making it.
How do you see the relationship between emotional and intellectual perception of your work? In particular, how much do you consider the immersive nature of the viewing experience?
I think both need to exist in the work simultaneously, although one may be more dominant than the other in any given piece. Some of my work has been created from an initial emotional reaction, particularly the pieces done in response to my parents’ deaths, and some, like the Desert Paintings and the Middle Kingdom series, come from a more intellectual approach. Having said that, there’s always a blend in my initial approach or idea. “A Block of Muted Sensation”, for example, had its initial conception in an emotional response, from trying to come to terms with grief and loss, but then is also at the same time an intellectual piece in that it is a deliberate attempt to capture a specific feeling. With “In a Silent Place” I was responding a lot more directly to the death of my father. I wanted the associations of mourning, but my approach was a lot less considered and far more instinctive. The Middle Kingdom paintings have a similar blend of emotion and intellect. I may have an immediate response to something I have seen, which I view as an emotional response, and then the intellect draws associations from that. “In Our Dreams We Have Seen Another World” would be an example of this. This piece, and many of the Middle Kingdom paintings are dealing with the idea of the rise and fall of civilizations (or dynasties) and how that ties in with human aspirations, our triumphs and failures, something I find profoundly moving. My thinking about this idea comes from an emotional response to something I’ve seen, a damaged piece of wall on a building or a piece of landscape, for example. That is to say, the project I am engaged in is intellectual in that it is dealing with ideas, but there is always an emotional component in my response to the idea.
Many people’s engagement with art and images is at a remove, particularly these days, through images on a screen or on a page rather than in a gallery, which complicates any notion of an immersive viewing experience. The experience of being in front of a piece of art and responding to it directly is very different to looking at an image of the work on Instagram, for example. I always prefer people to experience my work directly (and many people have told me that experiencing the work directly is a more powerful experience than just seeing photographs), as many of the details, the textures and colours, don’t really translate completely into an image of the work, and it is precisely these areas where I feel a lot of the power of the work is generated, where a lot of the layers of meaning can be uncovered and engaged with.
Before leaving this conversation we would like to pose a question about the nature of the relationship of your art with your audience. Do you consider the issue of audience reception as being a crucial component of your decision-making process, in terms of what type of language is used in a particular context?
de-identify myself, by losing my roots, my culture, I would be very happy. Unfortunately the human being does'nt choose the place where he is born. He grows up in a society that automatically identifies, through education, culture, family... More than ever I think it's more important to go on a way of self-knowledge with the aim to meet “the other”.. This other without which we can not exist. It's the same for the artist. It is more important for me to be focused on my practice than to try to define it according to esthetic criteria of identification. It's probably the reason i like to remember the painter Matisse who said or wrote that an artist must never be prisoner of himself, prisoner of a style, prisoner of a reputation.
Would you like to tell us something about your background? Could you talk a little about experiences that has influence the way you currently relate yourself to your artworks?
All my way is influenced by encounterings.
It began by the meeting with my professor of literature at school. More than giving French or Literature classes, she brought us to discover texts, movies, plays, visual artworks and to think about on what we saw or read.. Thanks to her that I met Pierre Vincke, a theatredirector who was worjink in the tradition of Grotowski ... Both of them have led me to go to theater school. In this school I had meetings. Meetings with artists but also and especially human beings that made me discover. I always need o discover rather than to master a practice. It's probably the reason my encounter with Monica Klingler and Boris Nieslony was decisive for me and led me on the path of Performance Art which is a form still difficult to define. Each performance artist has a different definition of what it is...
Could you identify a specific artwork that has influenced your artistic practice or has impacted the way you think about race and ethnic identity in visual culture?
No I don't have a specific artwork that has influenced my artistic practise but many.
I'm influenced by some philsophers as well as poets or musicians or dancers or visual artists but also by some places or landscapes or atmospheres ... For some years, I was used for example to go to India where I was used to follow some traditionnal muscians or to learn bharatanatyam and practice vipassana meditation... Of course this experience has impacted my art work.... This brought me to think and work differently... My experience in India brought me to discover traditionnal strong art and paradoxally to the way of Performance Art. But there I see one common point: to make no separation between art and life and to be here and now, without projection on the future.
It's difficult for me to speak about race and ethnic identity. But I can say that today we miss more and more this notion of “to be here and now” which is more present in some cultures ... By practising Performance Art, it's my way to be connected to this way of thinking. And even in this field actually it's more and more difficult. The society and the art world brings us more and more to plan in advance, to define our work, more than to do. Just to do. To do what we deeply need.
And of course, my encountering with Black Market International and later the notion of Open Source or Open session via PAErsche have also a big impact on my work. When we go on that, each of us perform by sharing time and space but without trying to convince each other on some common way. This is for me a wonderfull way how we can meet each other, regardless of our origin, our race or our “identity”...
Many of your works carry an autobiographical message. Since you transform your experiences into your artwork, we are curious, what is the role of memory in your artistic productions? We are particularly interested if you try to achieve a faithful translation of your previous experiences or if you rather use memory as starting point to create.
My memory is clearly a starting point to create. I don't have any autobiographical message. I use my personnal experience ( what I feel , what I see, what I learn, what I ear...) to work. It's a motor or a material. I'm not able to paint, so I can't do something with red or white or yellow or black colors. All I have is life, a body alive. And I need to do something with that...
My sensation about life sometimes is too intense then I need to transform this intensity in some action. Some artistic action... If people can take something from this action this is great... but I don't want to give them “a specific message” or to control the translation of my experience.