Hello Monica and welcome to NotRandomArt. To start with, would you like to tell us something about your artistical as well as life background? What inspired you to be in this artistical point in your life when you are now?
I am educated as an architect and spent my professional life as educator of design, theory, and art. I have always approached my work as an experimental practice. Even though I studied architecture my work has never been in pursuit of designing buildings. I became more interested in utilizing architectural concepts of form, structure and surface and especially in the blending of these systems to invent new entities and spatial/figural relationships. My paintings are exploring concepts of figuration and disfiguration as a process of fluctuation between figure and the color fields. The Dark contour grounds the figure while the substance of the figure melds into the space.
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?
Multiple genres and types of artistic production influence my work. I have always been interested in paintings by Francis Bacon and especially in the interpretation of his work by the theorist Gilles Deleuze. More recently contemporary Chinese Art, both painting and video arts, has profoundly impacted me. I am also very interested in graffiti and mural art culture. I believe all these works have strong political implications and at the same time the artistic value is not overshadowed by the message.
Concept of a bio-formalism seems to be crucial for your artistic process. Could you explore and explain it for our readers?
I have created a series of digital works titled Species. My concept of building three-dimensional work in the computer is an idea of growing form and formal relationships. I seek biological systems of growth, evolution, and mutation in order to develop methodologies for growing my digital species. I research cellular growth as well as plant morphology in order to develop procedures and rule sets to create these designs. One of my concepts is the process of varied aggregation. I start with one formal entity and then reproduce that entity with varied degrees of differentiation. I set up parameters in the computer to produce multiply formal entities. Each variation shows a process of change based on the concept of alteration. The species express the concept of bio-formalism both through their technique of growth and as a final product.
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?
I believe my identity is formed by my urban existence and life experiences growing up in New York City. My aesthetics is driven by my interest in theory, experimental architecture, street art and urban music.
What is the role of technique in your practice? In particular, are there any constraints or rules that you follow when creating?
My paintings go through three phases. I start by layering the field with colors, forms and streaks. Once I believe I have created multilayers of space to be occupied by my figure(s) I start to draw the facial expression and form. At this point I make a decision where abstraction will be applied. This process is influenced by graffiti art in that the black line operates as a continuous text. Once the figures are fluctuating within the painted layers, I start another layering of painting to materialize parts of the figure.
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?
As much as my work is driven by methodology, I am interested in what the work produces as a formal articulation. I am curious about how people perceive the transformation of my figures within their spatial fields. My hope is that the work does not appear to be static but rather presents itself in-a-process of transition between figuration and disfiguration.
Since we revolve around the issue of communication this time, we have one more question: in your opinion, can art change the future for inter-human communication?
How can art help us make sense of these complex histories?
I believe art should not function as an accessory to home décor. I am most triggered by art that provokes a critical view of a complex account and pushes the boundaries of representation. These types of works communicate concepts through multilayered propositions rather the singular one-liners. Though communication may be ambiguous they represent a multifaceted array of interpretation. Art can teach us to see the world and respond creatively to multipart situations.
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.