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Hello Jessie and welcome to NotRandomArt. The current issue is revolving around the problem of communication and identity. Is there any particular way you would describe your identity as an artist but also as a human being in dynamically changing, unstable times? In particular, does your cultural substratum/identity form your aesthetics?
Hello, I’m happy to take part of this issue of Not Random Art. In my work I research my cultural identity by looking at its memory, its traditions and the way it is structured in the minds of the people. My artistic practice is a way to understand and reflect on the aesthetics of the world around me. They are my answer to the dynamics of our culture and the culture itself with its traditions and mindsets. I was born and raised in a mix of cultures and languages. Belgium is a country in the heart of Europe, where the Germanic and Romance cultures and languages come together. My family is from both sides of the country. A lot of traffic passes through here: goods, people and information. I’ve lived in areas that have both rural and urban environments. You could say I live on a crossroad of different mindsets. It enables me to look at my culture both as a participant as well as a spectator. That’s my playground to create.
‘Thoughts and feelings live their own life, a life that is not easy to represent. That’s why sculptors and painters are constantly trying to find new ways to represent them’. This is a quote from the art historian Jan Smith, reflecting on the writings of Wittgenstein, and I feel like this quote fits my artistic research
As an artist I just started developing my work like this for a few years. Before that I searched a way of working with different media and applications within the visual arts. I seemed to be in a long-lasting identity crisis artistically, trying different things. It makes me relate to the identity that our culture in the Western world has at this point in time. It is a developing mish-mash of both the conservative and the progressive, the ones that are proud of their culture and the ones that look at other cultures for their truth. That tension is interesting to me. It also has its positive effect on my work: I’m not bound to one media, form or topic. I have a certain freedom of movement and research. It makes my playground relatively vast.
Would you like to tell us something about your artistic as well as life background? What inspired you to be in this artistic point in your life when you are now?
As a person I need a lot of time to reflect about my environment. In a time of big quantities, but mostly superficial information, I am a person in need of more in-depth information and research. In-depth information is also more available than ever before, because people do more research than ever before, but it is more difficult to reach through that jungle of communication and the speed of it. You could say that in-depth information is hidden behind the huge cloud of mostly brief and shallow information. Besides my own life experiences, I read and study about our culture, our history and society. My work often takes a lot of time in development as well as in production. That time is in contrast with the fast stream of information that invades our culture. It reflects my own need of time and depth as a person.
My life experiences guide me to specific topics and inspire me to make art. It often is difficult for me to find my place in society and that has an influence on my practice. The topics vary from the roles we play to the traditions we hold, the way we think as a culture about ourselves and others. Making art is a way for me to play with those constant tensions, this identity crisis in our culture and my own sensitivity, giving it a place in my aesthetic language.
Could you identify a specific artwork that has influenced your artistic practice or has impacted the way you think about your identity as a participant of the visual culture?
First of all, my artistic practice is influenced by the work of other artists. It was an exhibition of the work of Lygia Clarck that made me decide to make visual art, in particular sculpture and installations. The interactivity of her work made me reflect on the possible effect art can have on a public. Although it took many years after that experience, I decided to express myself through this language of art. The exhibition of her work in Brussels in 1998 has always stayed one of my most memorable experiences in life. When I was studying art later on, I came across other artists that inspired me: Rebecca Horn, for her use of space and contrasts, and Mona Hatoum for her cultural concepts and language. Doris Salcedo develops her work in a more in-depth manner. These are the main artists that influenced my work. There are, of course, other artists and works that are inspiring me every day. In my own practice ‘Mémoire’ was the first work where material, concept, interaction with the space and the public came together. It started out as a sketch for ‘Light Conversation’ but became a work on its own, with its own story. The lacing is something traditional in Belgium: Brussels and Bruges are known for their lace. My mother, amongst other members of my family, laces as a hobby. It is something I’ve known growing up.
aesthetic. I adapted ‘Mémoire’ to the space. It has a pattern but there are also wires that are not structured, a bit like life itself. There are things in life that we can control or guide, but also things that are out of our grasp. The work was laid down as a carpet on the earth, on a crossroad of paths. I burned the plastic off the gardening wire and people could then walk on the work. After a few weeks, when I removed the work, it left an imprint on the ground. Visually, this imprint vanished quickly, but the pieces of burned plastic are still part of this soil. The trace became a concept within my work. The lace is now exposed as a sculpture, being a trace itself of what it has been. I adapt it every time it is mounted. I let it evolve as a sculpture according to the space it is shown. Often I leave subtle traces of the work behind in the space after the exposition. This work became a metaphor for life itself and a representation of its own experiences. I gave it the title ‘Mémoire’, in French, because it means memory as well as biography.
This coming together of all the effects of the work and what it leaves behind was a starting point for the development of other works.
What is the role of technique in your practice? In particular are there any constraints or rules that you follow when creating?
Rules I follow more less. Of course, the pictures of a series are also similar to each other, but I do not force every picture to go the same. The pictures of the series are made of digital photos which were subjected with a analog manipulation. The play between the undercooled digital technique of photography and of the analogue deformation are essential for the works. In the course of the series, I have developed various techniques of analog manipulation to achieve similar results. Consequently, there are hard and soft techniques which lead to such deformations. The individual techniques are applied in part alone, partly mixed. In some pictures are found up to three different techniques, while other pictures remain with only one technique. Accordingly, the time required for the images is large to very large. While some pictures are finished after one day, others need several days to complete. The precise process of the deformation has not been betray since the beginning of the series and is thus part of the work. The existing secret of the analog deformation let clearance for personal interpretations.
olted by the Thought of Known Places… Sweeney Astray” by Joan Jonas was one of the first performance installations that really made a huge impact on me. I was living in Paris during this time, in the early 90s, with a lot of influences from different cultures. It became the starting point of my own work. Joan Jonas practice has explored ways of seeing, the rhythms of ritual, and the authority of objects and gestures. Jonas continues to find new layers of meanings in themes and questions of gender and identity that have fueled her art for over thirty years. She is a great inspiration still today.
It is impossible to avoid the topic of body consciousness, embodied emotions and the image of body and personal identity that we see in your practice. What is the function of the identity appearing in your artworks – is it a canvas used to present your ideas or rather the subject of the art? What inspired you to use this as a theme in your practice?
I have been developing my visual imagery since I began studying art and film - from conceptual thinking, composition, using light and colour in different ways, through all the different techniques I've utilised over the years in my work and in my collaborations with stage artists such as dancers, musicians and actors. My approach is always developing through exploring these things. Visual imagery in essence is your way of experiencing what you see and transforming it. This is my world that I want to share and express through my art. The body consciousness, embodied emotions and the image of body and personal identity is part of this visual imagery, the emotional essence in my practice. Always present and always developing in different themes and projects.
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.