The Art Magazine June 2020 | Page 30

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Every work is built on emotion as well as knowledge. The overall image is a result of those two things coming together. The slowness of the processes is certainly something that can be perceived in some sculptures/installations. It is in contrast with the everyday stream of images. I reflect a lot about the image I want to present but I also take time to just let things happen, to use my sensitivity and ability to play with it. This is crucial to my personal language.

A lot of aspects come together in many of the pieces I make. I make art that asks for some time to contemplate it. Even if it is very simple. The image I give is influenced by the silence I need to live or even survive in the chaos of the environment. It can also be the effect of the time I take to produce or research the work.

Most of my ideas come when I play with thoughts, with materials, with sketching. No matter how much reason there is in a work, there should always be time to play with those things. The melancholy that is in my image is the reflection of the melancholy of this culture mixed with my own. I deliberately do not use lots of colours to enhance the effects of the textures and forms, and their sensitivity in particular. In our culture dominated by images, almost everything is seen through a screen or in print. A lot of the texture vanishes through those media. They often ask for lots of colour instead. But seeing all those images, one after the other, hurts my perception in a way. It is as if every image wants to be the brightest, the one that stands out. It is as if they all want to scream. This makes them all very similar in my memory. Details and texture are more appealing to me.

Constructing my ideas, I want the image to be open for personal interpretation of the viewer. Inspiring the viewer and other artists is a goal for me that I take seriously. It stimulates the communication inside the art, but it can also inspire persons, science, philosophy and other aspects of human activity. I am inspired by those aspects to make my work, this is a way for me to contribute to that big conversation.

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?

Of course. I make my work for a public. It is a way for me to leave my own trace in the minds of people. As I explained earlier, interaction and the physical presence of the work are important components in the development of the work.

In order to enhance the viewer’s experience I hold a certain honesty in my formats and use of objects. I often start off with materials and objects that are man-made. The size is never really forced. It is important to my work because the viewer’s body will fit the format of the work and the object used or represented.

Physical presence can sometimes be confronting. ‘La Dame’ is a portrait of our perception of women in history. It is made out of hemp and jute wire. The wires start on an oval frame, a form that was often used in the past as a remembrance of a prominent lady. The wires are chosen because making those wires was a very heavy work carried out by poor people in the north of this country. This work does not only fill the space by the physical amount of wires, but the material also has a penetrating yet natural smell. ‘La Dame’ fills the room, giving a feeling to the spectator that they are intruding the work’s space. It also penetrates the nose of the person that shares its space, thus taking place inside their body. Interaction is often subtle, I don’t often ask for the public to be active, to do something consciously. They sometimes interact by just walking by, but mostly by just being present. If they walk past ‘Living’, there is a chance that they will move different pieces of furniture by the movement of the air. The pieces of furniture are shells of actual furniture that belong to various members of my family. I wrapped them in plastic foil, unwrapped them, and presented only the shells. These are hung on a web of sewing thread that gives them their original volumes. A slight gust of wind provokes movement quickly and the web transfers it to different elements of the installation. Even though they are different pieces, made in different places, they are connected to each other. The viewer is not only able to walk in between the furniture, but also able to interact in a, sometimes accidental, way.

Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Jessie. Finally, would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects? How do you see your work evolving?

I always have different projects and ideas that are in development. Lately I’ve been working on a series of webs in smaller boxes. ‘Boxed’ and ‘From doubt to dawn’ are 2 pieces of that series already published on my website right now, and others will follow. They are a reference to mental structure itself, the way we link ideas together in our minds. You could say they are 3-dimensional mind maps made in frames that were once boxes. What is very interesting in this research is that those webs can only be formed because they have different points of attachment to the boxes, like memories and thoughts themselves can only be attached to what is already present in the environment and the experiences of a person . The rhizome web structure is a structure that I already used in ‘Living’ and other works. They evolved out of formal researches.

There are other aspects of our culture that interest me, like the way we deal with people that are a bit different from the norm. Recent developments in DNA research stirs up that discussion once again. ‘Wallflower’ is a beginning in that development. It is less focused on traces, but more on the feeling of being set aside in society. The plastic is holding the form, suffocating it even. The form is an organic labyrinth, a reference to a person as a natural, organic being. It resembles bowels, a part of the body associated to feelings. The contrast between the nails in the soft, organic body and the plastic that is holding it in its place has a certain tension that I wanted to reach for that work. I’ve been studying a lot about the social position that people with ‘handicaps’, especially mental ones, take in this culture. It is not my goal to give criticism or solutions to those questions. As an artist, I’m only a witness of those evolutions and I am able to give an aesthetic and personal answer of what is present in the cultural mind.

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?

f your work? In particular, how much do you consider the immersive nature of the viewing experience?

The emotional and intellectual relationship of my work always begin as two very seperate things. At first glance, my art may seem frivolously aesthetic .The colours are vibrant, and deliciously arresting. But then you look a little closer, even through the simplicity of the block colour and basic lines of geometry and pattern, there is always a story within… and that is when the emotional and intellectual perception of my art merge and the true beauty is discovered.

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.