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What is the role of technique in your practice? In particular are there any constraints or rules that you follow when creating?
The process as an artistic practice (much inspired by Pollock's action painting) began exactly as the complete negation of my identity and biography. After all, it is very painful to constantly give space in the present to the pain of the past. And the process, art for art’s own sake, is much easier to digest, is not it?
Actually I was too immature to understand the complexity of the web where I was woven. At the age of 18 I had no idea how to talk about sickness, Christianity, Islam, loss, eroticism, etc. Even today, I have serious doubts that I really know something for sure. This is all part of my life story, but I was not prepared to create things from it. Create (or generate) from pain and putrefaction? It seemed impossible to me. So, the process in my work began as an "alchemical" quest for the perfect blot. Each experiment is registered and numerically identified. I discovered the perfect blot on what I have come to call skins. These skins are basically very thin and translucent ink membranes for which I alone hold the "secret formula". These ink skins are created inside a 450 cm swimming pool, the centerpiece of my work, called the womb. The Rooms of each one of my heteronyms are currently being built around this womb. When I fearlessly embraced my own life in its wholeness, everything grew in my creation. I stopped thinking only of process to become The Process in itself. The existence of the Skin gives rise to questions about the body, the skeleton, the spirit, the flesh, consciousness and the unconscious. In a way my ink skins became metaphors for all this. Metaphors for the complexity of Identity.
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?
Emotional and intellectual perception in my work can not be understood as two opposite things, but rather as two grains of sand in a playground full of jumping children.
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?
Hmm…. No. Not really. If I had to adapt constantly to the public, I would lose myself in it. If there is anything for which we (artists) must be absolutely genuine is in our relation with ourselves and, reciprocally, with our own art. Maybe that – adapting to the public – would be the easiest way out, I might not even need an outside job to support myself and my artistic practice. But I prefer it this way: having a meaningless job and making art that makes sense.
Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Nadia. Finally, would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects? How do you see your work evolving?
I think my work evolves every time I put a foot (and the Skin) inside the Cave.
The Cave (as an artwork) develops as a work in progress and I hope to have the structures of the rooms (of my heteronyms) mounted and ready to be exposed in museums or galleries until the end of this year. I already have several collective exhibitions scheduled this year and one individual show at the Military Museum in Lisbon by 2018. However, I’m mainly looking for galleries and museums in other parts of the world, that is currently my biggest focus.
Marina Abramovic stated: You see, what is my purpose of performance artist is to stage certain difficulties and stage the fear the primordial fear of pain, of dying, all of
which we have in our lives, and then stage them in front of audience and go through them and tell the audience, 'I'm your mirror; if I can do this in my life, you can do it in yours.'Can you relate anyhow to these words?
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.