Art as Experience
A conversation between Gilles Dusabe and Manuel Fadat.
MF : Hello, Gilles Dusabe. We have already had the opportunity to talk about art in general as well as your work in particular. I was even able to take part in one of your experiments during an exhibition in which we presented one of your "allonyms", Cile Jelin, and one thing leading to another, though I should put that in the plural, we realised that we had certain things in common. For example, you have been greatly inspired by Alfredo Jaar and I interviewed him myself a few years ago. Later, after discussing a host of topics with you and visiting one of your personal exhibitions, I began to understand your style, how you go about things, your plastic, aesthetic approaches, the vital character of creation in you as it translates a relationship to the world, to energy, to existential upheavals. Finally, I was able to understand that there were two great periods in your artistic life: one before and one after an event in Syria, namely a bombing in 2013. If I mention this in this introduction, it is simply to help the reader of our conversation get his bearings. As mountaineers would say, let’s plant the nails, attach the snap hooks and thread the ropes.
This interview will therefore be an opportunity to discover who you are and put together the links of the chain to enable readers to understand your work. It may constitute a landmark, that remains to be seen but, in any case, it should mark an important step in understanding who Gilles Dusabe is.
So, Gilles, to start the ball rolling, I suggest we start not from the beginning, because we know that origins are multiple, conscious, subconscious, etc., but I’d like you to begin with whatever comes to mind. This can be of a biographical nature, such as a period of discovery and learning or different encounters or journeys. Just draw from this well, from this source, and we’ll see how it evolves. So, tell me, Gilles, what significant experiences did you have as a child (laughing)?
GD: Well, you say that, but you more or less hit the nail on the head in that as a child, I did art therapy sessions. So art came to be a connection with a certain kind of suffering. And when I lost my father - I was a teenager at the time - I used creation to assimilate this loss, this void, this emptiness. Throughout my studies at the Fine Arts Academy, I was inhabited by the question of death, of emptiness so I worked a lot on physical and emotional detachment. One incident stands out for me. There was a time in my training when we were working on Land Art. We went into the forest, and I came to a small island in the middle of a river. I walked for a while and then found myself totally isolated. At the time, I was doing a lot of walking. In fact, I finished my degree with a walk from Geneva to Glasgow. But let's get back to the island. I got there by crossing a ford, since the river level was quite low. I had taken quite a bit of material with me, and in the vein of an Andy Goldsworthy, I undertook a decoration of the island, with, in my mind, the idea of life, of the beyond, of passage. There was the flow of the water, and the island cut off by this flow.
MF: That's a wonderful image of the flow, between two worlds, to be connected.
GD: Absolutely. I spent most of the day on the island. Some people were even worried about me, but finally I reappeared. The next day, we wanted to tour the sites but during the night, the river had risen and the island had become almost inaccessible. The word that comes to my mind is “detachment”. Detachment between myself and the work, with the emotion of the work’s creation, but also, surprisingly, with its loss, its death.
MF: What do you mean by that? You were able to contemplate the thing existing while at the same time being at a distance as if you had unblocked something by carrying out this ritual?
GD: Yes, I had taken a step back. Death and loss were still a part of me but I had put a branch of the river between the two; life, in fact.
MF: What comes to mind is the idea that creation transforms, converts. There's the artistic gesture, the plastic gesture, and all that it sets in motion, sensorially, mentally. As we transform matter, matter transforms us. Moved by certain processes, placing certain beliefs, symbolic in the organisation of this matter and of these signs, as well as in the gestures, the body and the mind are set in motion deep within us. Just like writing, or whatever else we enjoy doing, we do it because we feel whole doing it, in our rightful place. But it also means that you'd been paying particular attention to this specific kind of symbolic behaviour for a long time, that it had given you a certain serenity, that it fulfilled you. When did you decide to enrol in art school?
GD: I actually decided to be an artist when I was about ten years old. My father and I would very often go to Cadaqués where we lived basically a village life. There were long-haired artists, small cafés, it was really captivating. And then one day we went to Figeras to see the Dali Museum. This was an eye-opener. I was immediately won over by this new reality, by the imaginary aspect, by the freedom, a freedom that I had felt nowhere else. If I had had to choose an artistic path because people said I had a certain gift, it was there that I first felt the deep desire to launch myself into this particular universe. Thank you, surrealism.
MF: So just like Dali in his tv advert for chocolate, it was love at first sight.
GD: This particular museum offers other perceptions, and that's when you understand that there are several possible worlds, different worlds, and then there’s installation. What really struck me was installation art.
MF: It’s true. There is a lot in this museum; the relationship with dreams, with automatism, with the freedom to create, to assemble, to arrange, to manipulate signs, with the real, with the symbolic, with the imaginary, but also with the conjunction of the arts, painting, literature, etc.
GD: It's a universe, an engrossing experience, a tipping point. Something fundamental. My father had studied Fine Arts in Madrid. He was quite a character, above all a musician in the dark alleys of Lyon. He knew the full repertoire of Brel and Brassens. I was weaned on creativity. And I have to say, it hasn't left me. A large part of my spare time was devoted to art and reading. In secondary school, there was a kind of outhouse, a big workshop, if you like. This was my refuge. That's where I felt best. My path was clearly set out.
Then, after completing my secondary studies, I left for London: independence, no limits, endless temptations, day and night mixed into one. But I was relentless. I worked non-stop. Then I went to the Glasgow School of Art to study textile design. I thought you could discover the world through textiles, fabric, tapestry, carpets, but also the world of symbols, and I found the relationship between art and functionality fascinating. But something was missing, the relation to process, or perhaps more the freedom of creation, so I switched to the plastic arts. I started in the Painting department but very soon I couldn't confine myself to it so I quite literally haunted all the departments. I became famous for that! Sculpture, public art, architecture, graphic design. As a free spirit, I built bridges between departments until I was eventually given a workshop in the basement of the school. Here there were objects of all kinds, old marble, old sculptures, plaster works, etc. I was a particularly good artist. I used to draw in the dark, a delicious anonymity. And during my last year, I walked from Geneva to Glasgow. I set out at the very beginning of the new millennium. I woke up at 5am, badly equipped, with a survival blanket and skiing underwear, camping out or sleeping in churches and barns.
MF: A sort of pilgrimage?
GD: You could say that, but above all, it was all to do with creating a work of art, in the vein of Hamish Fulton. Taking a step, making a line, all in connection with the drawing. I had already experimented in Ireland where I made a drawing of a face while walking.
MF: Hamish Fulton's work is exceptional. I can understand that you should want to follow in his footsteps. Obviously, I'm also reminded not only of the Nazca but also of Hreinn Fridfinnsson, Francis Alÿs, the Stalker group and the excesses of the psycho-geographical movement. What’s more, without going into detail, there is a very good book on the subject by Thierry Davila called “Marcher, Créer” (Walk, Create).
GD: At one point, I reached out to Hamish Fulton. I had many projects around walking, and with this in mind, I walked across part of Japan. During the Geneva-Glasgow walk, there were projects within the project. I would photograph words in certain situations because I was doing a lot of poetic work at the time. I was doing in situ work, as well as a lot of work on light, which led to me making a series of large-format snow masks. I was in a barn that I used as a workshop. At night, I would light them up and take pictures of them using a long exposure time which gave a sensation of supernatural light, giving life to the faces which were like spirits of the forest. A certain mystical dimension. And this work had quite an effect a professor at Makerere University of Art in Uganda, which was a sign for me. This meeting, which took place at the end of my university course, was an incredible moment. We talked a lot about the mask, about his creation, about modelling, because he was a potter, but also about the ritual character, the strength...
MF: … of Animism, I guess, and what the mask produces when you wear it. You become the mask. Transfiguration.
GD: Exactly, and at the end of the discussion he invites me to Uganda, and I take him at his word. I finish Glasgow, I work, I make enough money to survive and I arrive at the University in Kampala. He is surprised to see me but first contact is good, and I do a lot of workshops. I maintain relationships and I discover a country. Projects, drawings, woodcuttings, and following up on the writing work I was doing in Glasgow, I create a signage, an alphabet, a language, and I get into visual poetry, with signs linked to words. A dense period of creation, I did a lot of digging around. Then, when I ran out of money, I was lucky enough to be able to work for several months for the Ugandan Wildlife Authority, an organization that looks after the National Parks, and thereby to move from one reserve to another. Throughout this time I drew, painted, took photographs and wrote. When I got back home, I created an exhibition of it all, along with the imaginary alphabet that I had developed.
MF: Always this link between the stroke of the written word, the stroke of the drawing, the line and the word, and playing with symbols. We can translate this as a quest for meaning. A quest that consists of making something visible, leaving a trace, marking, writing down one's existence. Also, you do a lot of recording, in the form of video and photography. It's interesting this way of drawing lines, of producing lines, and at the same time of making a link and a trace by recording these lines that are walked, drawn and written. Furrowing lines on the ground, scribbling on paper, existing. How interesting it is that this writing about yourself takes you to Africa. But if I'm not mistaken, there are other links with Africa, aren't there?
GD: Indeed. For example, it was during my trip to Uganda in 2001 that I discovered Rwanda, which turns out to be essential for me in my personal life and my current artistic work, both of which are intertwined. One day, I was invited for lunch near the Rwandan border, but beforehand I had asked to go for a little walk alone in the village. I came to an incredible building, and I walked around this place where nature had taken over, and where the walls were riddled with bullets. An enormous tension. It had been the scene of a dramatic incident. I then found out that it was a school. The emotion was intense. I filmed this moment and then I went back to Uganda. I have never shown this video but I hope my children will see it one day. After Uganda I went on to Ethiopia and Kenya.
MF: You wanted to get deeper into this continent?
GD: It's a bit like that but I’m also attached to it on my father's side of the family. My father was a “pied-noir”, a Frenchman born in Morocco, but all my family was born in Algeria. My grandfather was a development worker, a doctor in rural areas. For them, leaving meant tearing up their roots. I grew up with love for Africa, without knowing anything about colonisation, with no knowledge of the distressing relationship between the Western World and Africa, and the feeling I have is that this is my second home. So much so that as a child, I had a friend, a brother, who was Togolese, in Geneva, and we were inseparable. My mother sometimes tells me how traumatic it was when he left. I cried for a week. The heartbreak.
MF: Multiple are the connections with Africa. And vital. Also, I can feel in your journey this longing to exist, and even more, to feel that you exist, to taste and feel yourself taste, to live things while taking care to feel, to see and perceive yourself, and to condense what has been lived and felt into a work of art. You are on the alert, searching, recording. This is your engine. Then there is the plastic materialisation, which "secures" everything but without defining, without stopping, in order to continue on a better basis.
GD: Yes, that's right. That’s also how I feel. Of course, it has become more sophisticated, but indeed there is this strong idea of showing what I felt, of making what I experienced appear, and that the work is a condensation, a formulation, also of experiencing something that I can pass on. But this link to Africa, sensitive, carnal, as with all my other trips, cannot be thought of without the journeys to and from Geneva, which is my base, the city of my family, of my friends. My link to Africa is also based on travel, movement, adventure. I could paraphrase Nicolas Bouvier whom I discovered as a teenager; it is because I travel that my link to Africa is such as it is. In short, I am of this world. And besides, my father's family lives in different places all over the world; Turkey, the United States, China etc. A family steeped, of course, in uprooting.
MF: Sometimes this uprooting creates absence, the lack of something which can generate a longing, in this case for you a longing to pursue a life between Switzerland and Africa. When did you first go to Africa?
GD: Just after my year in London and the death of my father, I went to Morocco alone. I was 19 years old. This expedition was a symbolic way to begin mourning my father and my aim was remembrance. I went to the village where my father was born, Ouezzane, in the Moroccan Riff area - so majestic! I found myself, totally naïve in this barren landscape. I was on edge, paranoid, not filtering anything out. I met the wrong sort of people. It was my first trip alone, I wasn’t tuned in, a little too raw. For later trips, to Morocco and elsewhere, I was more on the alert. Now I look all around, 360 degrees, I observe, I absorb and I anticipate as best I can while at the same time being lulled by the unknown.
MF: Do you see this first trip as an artistic experience?
GD: Not really, I wasn’t yet in this logic of creating lines, of drawing with my body in movement, but I was when it came to sketches, notes and poems. But I still started out in the spirit of a young artist-traveller, though with far fewer benchmarks than I would establish later. After my studies, things were much more grounded, and all my trips were opportunities to experiment. For example, after Uganda, I headed off to Europe via Kenya and Ethiopia on horseback, through the mountains. And that’s where I first experienced fasting, while at the same time drawing, filming and taking notes.
MF: In short, you create situations, conditions enabling possibilities. We might even say creations under constraint or influence, which in art is almost a practice in its own right, in line with performance. You wanted to live.
GD: I was looking for intense moments. There were truck journeys, illegal immigrants stowed away in heavy-goods vehicles. But my aim was to get to Lake Turkana, which was considered to be the cradle of humanity. I arrived at an out-of-the-way market and stopped in front of a shack. I sat down right there, close to where our ancestors first came from. It was majestic. I will always remember the women, their skin coated in red earth, and the men with their braided hair and pink tunics. There was nothing exotic about it. I simply wanted to get closer to the cradle of humanity: just be there. I was contemplating the eternal. Then all of a sudden, a convoy of four-wheel drives turn up full of tourists, their pockets bursting at the seams with dollar bills, kitted out with cameras of all kinds. And they start getting high and giving out money left right and centre. Everything was perverted. I arrive in a temple, and a storm of capitalism breaks out. So, while I was there, I thought I'd write a few words, go beyond this event and write a few verses. A man approaches me and asks me for money. Striking.
MF: The end of a world. The same observation made by many, including Levi-Strauss in his Tristes Tropiques2. It's violent.
GD : Then there was Khartoum, a very beautiful city, very romantic, sublime. Here I came across kindness, generosity, benevolence. I remember the parks of roses, lovers, existentialism, Sartre. And then the return to Geneva, where I'm looking for myself, setting up an exhibition with my friends Marie-Claude and Eric at the Café des Arts in the Pâquis; then London, where I did some stage work and mime for a while, in the form of internships and workshops. But always marked by this link between art and healing. I answered an ad and went for an interview for a job as an art therapist assistant in a psychiatric hospital, and, by some miracle, I was given the job. I work for a year, in contact with illness, crises, isolation, and I throw myself body and soul into painting. I work with earth, materials, textures. I absorb, I take a lot on during the day with the patients, and then I have to unload.
MF: We are struck by many things, often quite violently. We never seem to be very far away. We need to expel in order to compensate for it. It's a safety valve. There are different ways of doing it.
GD: Ah yes, it's huge, incredible. I've also had moments of fusion as well as very tricky moments. Then I got the director's permission to put these paintings together in an isolation room and make a film of them. One of my first films, in this case, in 8 mm, with my father's camera. So 8 mm had a lot of meaning for me. It constitutes a strong link with my father's spirit.
MF: Of course you don't film the same way when a camera is inhabited. Here again, the object has a soul.
GD: Exactly, and there is also the magic of 8 mm projection, technological magic, and poetic magic for me, bringing back great memories of my childhood. Then I switched to 16 mm with experimental films, under my former pseudonym.
MF: Coming back to your work, you still went quite some way to find yourself, testing your limits.
GD: Yes, but it was a very constructive period, because you can come to understand quite a few things, that art doesn't heal in a direct way, notably because patients need medicine but the practice of plastic and verbal arts is a relief, which sometimes allows you to let go, which becomes nourishment for the soul. It also makes the world visible.
MF: Why did you stop art therapy? You say you only stuck with it for a year?
GD: How did things go? It's a little complicated, but let me explain, because there were several paths, and I chose one. At that time, as well as art therapy, I was clowning for a living. At the same time that I was working on how to continue art therapy, I applied to a school in Paris to become a mime. I was accepted at the Jacques Lecoq school but as I had already made one or two trips to Japan during my studies in Glasgow, and the series of paintings I made at the psychiatric hospital had much more in the way of Nobuo Nakamura, I received at the same time an invitation from the Contemporary Art Centre (CAC) of Kitakyushu, Japan, a centre in a very interesting industrial city with many cultural and industrial districts, Yakuza, tensions and difficult neighbourhoods. I had already done a lot of walks in Japan, and it was a country that fascinated me. Of special note was the Bashô walk. Bashô it was who invented the poetic form of haiku. So I made up my mind and chose the path of contemporary art rather than that of mime. I stayed there for two years, and met many artists such as Maurizio Cattelan, Olafur Eliasson, Rikrit Tiravanija, Roman Ondak, Jean-Luc Moulène, and Kendell Geers.
MF: A difficult choice to make there between two such meaningful things, but it seems that you made the right one, since you met such eminent people!
GD: That's for sure! Nobuo Nakamura is the one who first brought Joseph Beuys to Japan. Advice, kindness, an outstanding person. I think Nobuo believed in my painting, but in Japan I discovered a very relational, performative artistic way of doing things, based on walking and as such on poetry. But he encouraged me to return to painting. I also met Akiko Miyake, one of the curators of the Yokohama Triennial. She was a great character with an incredible knowledge of contemporary art in all its forms. And then there was Japan, the opportunity, that first year of mine, to consolidate my knowledge. Of course, I already had a strong background but I needed to have a better understanding of the art being created so in the early days I would often go to study at the centre's library.
MF: Artistically, how do you go about things? I imagine you have many different ways!
GD: I walk a lot alone and with my walking companion, Asmund Havsteen-Mikkelsen. I'm learning 16 mm. I’m starting to shoot my own films. I also do installations. For example, I'm interested in plants, I’m making a survey of existing plants in the neighbourhood. I collect. I make fertiliser from the resident artists’ organic waste, and I freshen up the plants, which I then exhibit. I also recycle my artist friends’ paper waste, and with it I publish things.
MF: It's all to do with relational aesthetics.
GD: Yes, it is, and I feel very comfortable with this form. I also do spontaneous events. At the same time the 16mm film literally inhabits me. I'm very interested in Stan Brakhage, Kenneth Anger and Jonas Mekas. I meet a host of artists working on the loop. I also meet Tacita Dean, who influences me enormously with her way of working but also the way of presenting the videos in the form of an installation. I'm so focused on film, on projection, that I even came back to Yverdon to specifically buy a Bolex camera to work with. And I compose films, some conceptual some based on a narrative.
MF : Is this the era of Misaki Town?
GD: Absolutely. In fact, the Misaki Town adventure is quite special.
MF: I’m looking forward to hearing about it, but first, to recap, walking, poetry, events, lots of reading, video, and meetings. But how do you meet all these people?
GD: At the workshop. Through Nobuo and Akiko. They invite international artists and at each residence, they make an appearance. Each artist who comes to exhibit also comes to visit us in the workshops as a young artist. After a year, I’d found it so constructive that I asked to stay for another year, and they accepted.
MF: Exceptional. Not everyone is granted that. I imagine that it's already quite an acknowledgement, their accepting your request. But it's still a fanciful life, incredible all the same, this rich all-round life driven by art, creativity, the longing for culture and knowledge.
GD: It's very rich, yes, and that's exactly what I appreciate, but paradoxically, as I'm always on the move, I’m always going from one place to another, one workshop to another, one artist to another, one
encounter to another. In fact, just after Japan, I met a gallery owner in Paris, and she told me that in contemporary art, you have to get established otherwise it becomes too difficult.
MF: That's a gallery owner's point of view.
GD: Yes, it's just that they need consistency, benchmarks, a structured career.
MF: It might be better to think of art as a flow... and forget a bit about career strategies, even if they exist. In any case, you personally compose on impulse, on intuition, on emotion.
GD: That's right, and moreover that's what has allowed me to meet exceptional people who have always revitalised me and who have always set in motion processes that I wasn’t fully expecting. In Japan, I met one phenomenal person, Ofusa Jun, Nam June Paik's assistant. He opened up for me a Japan that I could never have imagined; atmospheres, contrasts, places. We did workshops and a few projects together. As he is one of the first video jockeys, we did raves together, and I became, if you like, a partner on some projects, notably Urban Haiku. I don't think I ever told him, but he was like my master over there. It was magical because he embodied the link to Nam June Paik.
MF: So he was a sort of structuring figure. I find it interesting that you say he embodies the link. Through him, you symbolically discovered Paik, who himself is a link to Fluxus and Beuys.
GD: Yes, and also Beuys, whom I discovered in Glasgow, and who had already opened a path for me, that of the line, of drawing. It was through sensitivity to the line that I came to understand drawing. With Joseph Beuys, I understood that drawing is personal history, an emotional charge. But to get back to Jun, for several years I didn't see him any more, for almost twelve years in fact. I recently got back in touch with him. But he passed away two weeks ago. I let time go by, too much time. His death was an electric shock. An awakening. Especially because there was a small series of events that will tie me to him forever. After Japan, I came back to Geneva, and my mother became seriously ill. She was given six months to live, and she was finally saved thanks to a condensed form of the Japanese shitake mushroom and rice bran which strengthens the immune system and which I now take daily. Another strong bond with Japan. But also, during the last stay at June's house, his wife gives me a sculpture, a cascade of small origami, a shamanic sculpture to protect my mother. And this object has not moved from my living room for all these years. It is a link beyond art.
So, I stay one year in Geneva, taking care of my mother. I move her into a bright apartment. Artistically, I embark on a big project, financed by a production company called Bordu films. Perfectly in line with my way of doing things, it's about drifting from one city to another, though in urban spaces, which is not usual for me, since I was used to taking walks in the countryside, surrounded by nature. For example, the last major walk I took was in Japan on one of the sacred mountains, Osorezan. Every year, shamans gather there, and you can go from the land of the living to the land of the dead. You cross a bridge, and you can go to meet your deceased relatives. I made a film of it all. I did the ascent, fully equipped. It was an exceptional experience.
Anyway, where was I? So, I get finance for the Self-Portrait project, and I travel, to Iran, Brazil, Japan, China, Senegal, the United States, Turkey, etc. I create a mental city, composed of several smaller cities, constituting a reflection of architecture, urban space, the relationships within these spaces and one’s self. You will always find me in places of transition. As such, ever in transit. I open doors, which lead me to another place. It's a bit like an Escher loop. People recommend me certain places but I have heavy, cumbersome equipment with me, and all the time I’m having to develop 16mm film.
MF: Editing as well?
GD: No, the editing was done in Barcelona by Fred Florey, and the producers David Epiney and Eugenia Mumenthaler who have all become great friends.
MF: Is there a particular link to the directors who influenced you? Did you want to be part of a particular lineage, or are you just leaving with everything you've accumulated?
GD: Well initially the project was inspired by Jonas Mekas. The title of his work, Self-Portrait, says a lot. This film defined me perfectly since it was the crystallisation of what is practiced all over the world, and includes even more tales of journeys to Peru, Australia, Canada, Sri Lanka, Argentina and many more places besides. The influences, the connections, the encounters, as with Abramovic and Ulay on the Great Wall of China, and, as usual, limits surpassed and dangers provoked.
Let me just tell you a few stories. So there I was, on this wall, looking for the place where the two great artists had split up, walking alone like a madman in this never-ending quest. Night was slowly falling and sections of the wall were perilous climbs far from the parts that were open to the general public. A Chinese police guard had even been called out to find me because my frantic race to find this place, so important to performance art, had led me totally astray. But I found myself fully immersed in this work as if I had never wanted Abramovic and Ulay to separate.
Another time, in the industrial zone of Istanbul, with all my film equipment, I’m climbing up a steep wall giving me access to a huge concrete building under construction. Before this structure had any architectural function, I perceived it as a work of art, an object of discovery, where I cautiously climbed about twenty floors without any safety net or protection. With the central staircase bathed in light and shadow, I was able to photograph one of its short steps, suspended in the void; refined, minimal aesthetics. Guards were waiting for me at the bottom of the staircase and things were very tense.
And to bring to a close these few anecdotes, which could be put together in a book, I quite simply take you to a lift, which might easily be in Tokyo or in Hong Kong, going from one floor to another, from one city to another and from one dimension to another.
MF: It's interesting to hear you talk about this project. I perceive lines, movement between lines, constellations, possibilities, as if the world were a multidimensional playground, which brings me back to football, which we've previously talked about. I believe you've played a lot of football in your time. It seems to me that there is an analogy here; simulations, lines, the energy of movement, the prizes, life being played out, crucial choices to be made to go in one direction or another, analysis.
GD: Yes, it can be seen that way. I was football crazy and it was an outlet, a moment of intense collaboration, of transcending myself and ourselves, as well as a moment of solidarity. I was a leader, a locomotive with a voice that often held sway.
MF: Art and sport... creativity, process, putting things into perspective.
GD: Yes, the analogy seems to work. The link with travel too. I travelled a lot with football. When I gave up to go and study art in London, an absence and an uneasiness followed until I introduced physical effort into my artistic approach in the form of walking. I needed effort, to feel and seek out my physical and mental limits. And I completely transformed my perspective because instead of entering a professional career, I was able to experience football in unique experiences of sharing: in a medina in Morocco, in Uganda in the rainforest, in the Ethiopian plains, in Rwanda with soldiers, in the middle of the skyscrapers in Hong Kong or on the beaches of Zanzibar.
MF: Football as a meeting point; football as life; the game that links. In a class of its own. A bit like your relationship to art. What interests you is an artistic life, a life that has meaning via art, which is valid beyond the clichés of language. When you talk about football today, you're talking about a relational, human experience, independently of the institutionalised sport and the codes that go with it. When you talk about art, it’s clear that it's also the human, emotional aspect that interests you, the creative experience. But let's get back to Self-portrait, which leads us back to the world of association.
GD: Well, we got back from our trip, and started editing in Barcelona. I must say, to be pragmatic, that I was still counting on the finalisation of this project to open up opportunities and specifically exhibitions. The film was well received and was shown in many festivals but I had to leave Barcelona to find work and earn a living. I worked as a bodyguard, a waiter, a gardener, etc. But a very striking element comes back to mind, which all the same was an important link for the launch of the Self-Portrait project. Just after Japan, I was invited to do a solo exhibition in Geneva, at Attitudes, a space for contemporary art. There I had the chance to meet the curators Olivier Kaeser and Jean-Paul Felley, important people on the Geneva and now international scene, but also Mr André Itten, founder of the Biennial of Moving Images. He was very fond of Misaki Town, which he had included in the Biennial. And this exhibition at Attitudes counted for a lot, and it was followed by a second one in another gallery in Geneva. And then I went on the road with Autoportrait, this sprawling project, and on my return, I was broke, financially, and had dried up artistically. I had laid myself bare, given everything I had, bled myself dry. I had to work, to get food. It was also a time of great questioning.
However I was also nourishing projects, notably to walk along the Pacific coast. After some time, I left for Berlin. I phoned Asmund Havsteen-Mikkelsen, who was my companion in the Japan walk. A thinker, an artist, a tormented man like me. I can still see before me the scene in Berlin. Life is intense, so we get together to rent a factory and create a community of artists. The project is incredible, I want to throw myself into it body and soul and the idea matures, but I decide to go to London where I work as a cook. I rent a workshop and in one year paint four paintings made of short, repetitive lines. And there, I meet Fabiola, the Rwandan woman who will be my future wife. After a year in London, we go to Brussels together. It's a new beginning, for two.
MF: What about art in all this?
GD: Always in me, of course, but there were two of us now, building something together. I wanted to move forward in a different way. There was no way I was going on a trip or throwing myself into another project alone. So to make a living, I became a commercial photographer, always hyper intense, hyper physical. There, my founding exhibition was at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts with Saito Nijiko, a Japanese artist, geisha and pee-pee lady in an underground club in Tokyo, my first attempt at an allonym. So, for as long as the exhibition lasted, I transformed myself into a bearded Japanese woman. She produced works of small monochromatic lines with lots of bright colours. Then something beautiful happened. We got married, and during the honeymoon in Rwanda, which lasted for a while, I met family, friends, did some research and found a job a bit by chance in a school created after the genocide against the Tutsis in 1994 aimed at giving Rwandan men and women the chance to have a quality international education. It was an opportunity to settle in Rwanda, and we wanted to live in Africa. However, my wife, a genocide survivor, was still a bit worried about settling there, but in the end, it became something essential, even formative for her as much as for me.
MF: It seems to me that you were right to make this choice, personally as well as artistically.
GD: Absolutely! I began to work with other artists, to bring artists together, to launch exhibition projects such as a Biennale. I completely disconnected from the artistic network I had built up in Japan, Canada, England, the United States and Europe, I constructed my studio in the open air, and I renounced the identity of Gilles Gabriel Grassioulet, who was more associated with my video work, to take on that of Gilles Dusabe. I remain influenced by the meeting of different mediums, the work of Jonas Mekas, a relational dimension, but with a more African identity, practice, and attitudes, which I let overflow from me in a pan-African context. I quickly organised an exhibition, called Bliss of the Unknown, in a large house, the Sunset Villa in 2012 in Kigali, all the rooms of which I had at my disposal. Paintings inspired by Kitenge textile patterns, wood sculpture and interactive installation between visitors, photographs of daily life, sensory video installation; about twenty works that will be partly revealed only when the monograph I am preparing, which will include this conversation, is published.
MF: Let's talk a bit about this exhibition. So it's in a house. That’s something special.
GD: Yes, another specific choice. I don't exhibit in a gallery, but in a familiar place, so there is a powerful, emotional, off-the-beaten-track dimension.
MF: And performative, since you are making a "performance" of the place you live in, with its spirit etc. It's almost a huge in situ installation, made up of fragments.
GD: So this exhibition is linked to identity. It is a retrospective of a year's work, in an African context. I just let myself follow all the inspirations of the moment to see where I was, what Africa was doing to me, as I was entering into fusion with Africa. For me, the big questions were the following. You are an artist in a particular place, with certain means. What are you doing in this place? With whom? What materials? What images? What outlook? What attitudes? How do you exhibit?
MF: Contextual, therefore, contextual. So you adapt and remain open to what the environment offers you.
GD: Yes, that's exactly it. You make do with what you have, but it's great because it breaks your habits. So my painting starts to be closely related to textile, with a lot of patterns and symbols. A lot of 35mm photography, which is one of the mediums I had studied in Glasgow. I record moments, smells, mist, life. I produce relational interactive works. I had also brought in an illustrator who tattooed people on the spot, filmed and projected live. Stencil work on the walls. Woodcarving work. Yes, a creative explosion... and free, as there were no expectations and no commercial objectives.
MF: You fill a house with works, you make this house-spirit resonate with these works, works that are the expression of your search for a new identity, of your aspirations, inspirations, explorations and emotions. You play with this house that becomes in its turn a sculpture, that becomes an organic, almost living totality. All this makes me think of the notion of a total work of art, the famous gesamtkunstwerk. From the original pattern to the installation, from the micro to the macro. It's multidimensional. It's a way of playing with time and space, and it's a good example of your practice and approach.
GD: In any case, this experience made me feel like I was living! It was intense! A lot of videos too. I refurbished a bus in which I projected a video of a damaged road. I had filmed a road full of potholes, and I thought it was like a barrel organ, so in a studio, I had a soundtrack added with modulations based on the potholes. But the Sunset Villa still has a lot of meaning for me. That's where it all started for Gilles Dusabe.
After this exhibition, which is a milestone, my work becomes more and more politically engaged after a bomb attack in Syria, in Damascus, in 2013, a tragedy that really upsets me, and even transforms me. Why this particular attack? I don't know why. We don't know all the paths of our emotions. I said to myself, it's all well and good my work reflecting what I’m experiencing, where I’m living etc. but I felt that I was out of step with reality and the violence of the world. That sarin gas explosion gave me the will, as you put it so well, to get socially and politically involved, and reminded me that art is not just entertainment. I just had the feeling that it wasn't enough, that something was missing, that I was missing something. I felt right in the way I was doing it, that is, creating freely outside the expectations of the art world but there was a depth missing. This is when I plunge back into the work of Kendel Geers, a contemporary artist from South Africa, whom I met at the CCA Kitakyushu in Japan and who has a clear political commitment, a striking force of expression and visual impact. And so this tragedy, this powerlessness in the face of this attack, led me in 2014 to create The Inevitable, which has toured festivals around the world. In this video, hundreds of statuettes, innocent people with their hands in the air, made by Twa potters and photographed beforehand, are then destroyed by a bulldozer.
MF: The statuettes don't move. This shows the stupefaction of the humans and the speed of the attack. You were trying to represent the universality of a massacre and the capacity of humans to destroy en masse.
GD: Absolutely. And this video really resonated with the Rwandan public. It’s easy to understand why. But there was a second tragedy: an attack by fundamentalists in a shopping centre in Kenya. A very close friend of mine was there with her daughter. The great Ghanaian poet, Kofi Awoonor, also lost his life there. I paid homage to him in Tribute to Kofi Awoonor. Our whole community was affected. Again, these events have a profound effect upon me, hurt me, and I need to express all that, and I want my creations to make sense and share what I feel.
MF: It's reality that catches up with you. You're in search of authenticity. You have to symbolise and formulate. All this has to come out!
GD: Yes. Absolutely. The next exhibition in 2015, Terror, held at The Office, is permeated by these tragic events. I had crossed paths again with the works of Alfredo Jaar, an artist who is unclassifiable for me and who is a great inspiration to me. The works then created were positioned, disturbing, shocking, uncomfortable, in resonance with the violence in the world. But I always kept the specificity of creating bridges with the mediums. At the very entrance to the exhibition there was a performance. I asked a genuine head of security to search the spectators. I don't have any pictures of that, but in Rwanda or elsewhere, when someone searches you at the entrance of a building, it's because something serious maybe about to happen or that an important personality is or will be present. The spectator was thereby plunged directly into a context of suspicion and fear.
MF: Interesting. Contextual. You create conditions of disconcerting visibility. This is in line with the idea of the exhibition as a media, an exploration, a creation, a meta-work if you will, in which you dig into all the possibilities. Fiction, here, will strongly influence the reality of the visit, sensitivities and sensorialities, thus moving the aesthetic experience. Performance on all floors. Perception is tinted by this new filter that places people in a "productive" uncertainty since it will sharpen the senses and create either attraction or repulsion.
GD: This exhibition is really important. It's a transition. I feel ready, comfortable with what I’m expressing. Again, this is not a traditional exhibition space. It's just a place for getting together and exchanging ideas. I had originally asked for it to be emptied completely, but I did in fact use the furniture. In the exhibition there was the initial version of The White Widow, which is totally in reaction to the fundamentalist attack on the shopping centre. But there is also Tower of Power, Red Alert and The Black Scarecrow. At that time, I was inspired, as I had been for a long time, by African artists such as Chéri Samba and his power to portray everyday scenes that are sometimes politicised or even go so far as to express political commitment, by the great Senegalese artist Ousmane Sow with his secret chemistry, blending a mixture of raw materials, innovation and grace, as well as by El Anatsui who remains a role-model for me with his conceptual dimension while at the same time creating very aesthetic fabrics by manipulating materials that make clear the relationship between Africa and the Western World.
But very quickly, another big change takes place, as we return to Geneva and I take up a position as professor and curator. Professionally, without doubt, it is interesting, stimulating, and as always, I am deeply committed. And artistically, it may be an opportunity to forge new links based on my new identity and the work I’m developing. However, I keep my studio in Kigali. This remains the place of my greatest inspiration and I go back there on a regular basis.
MF: So you remain in a state of equilibrium across two continents.
GD: Exactly. And besides, the pieces move, evolve. I can create in Kigali and finalise in Geneva. The pieces are nourished by this double atmosphere. In Geneva, for example, in 2017, I mounted my first exhibition at the Centre des Arts with some works I first displayed at The Office, but often improved, transformed, or re-enacted when it was a performance. This is the case with The White Widow, but also Tribute To Kofi Awoonor, which became a video, along with many other creations. There are different versions of the same work.
MF: Yes, stand-alone yet “upgradable” versions. It's interesting to reactivate works, to see what they say elsewhere. That also explains one of the subtleties of your work.
GD: That’s right. Over this recent period, in and around 2017, I've devoted a lot of time to reactivating works, in another context, with the other constraints of my schedule. There was moving house followed by my involvement in the Arts Centre. This was something major for me. I wanted it to be powerful. I do it with passion and enthusiasm. There are also curatorial implications because with Momar Seck, also an excellent artist, we mount many exhibitions in the Arts Centre, some in which we present our works, such as the Collective Memories exhibition. In short, everything goes very fast, I'm very busy, I don't spare myself, and as usual: I research. I want to experiment, I want to break new ground, I want to continue on the path of using several media but I also want, depending on the medium, to be able to take on the responsibility of developing different messages and language since this is where my character leads me. I’m for ever caught between doubt and a longing for everything. I then decide to give free rein to my multiple creations, to assume my different artistic personalities, so to speak.
MF: How greedy! (laughs)
GD: Yes (laughs)! But at the same time, and this allows me to move on with my story, I discover Fernando Pessoa who helps me out, with his heteronyms? They become a source of strength for me, providing me with the opportunity to satisfy my creativity: no limits, no boundaries. So I throw myself headlong into the creativity of artists from different horizons, cultures and identities, somewhat in line with Saito Nijiko, whom I mentioned earlier.
MF : Once again, you create a context, you create a situation, you create the rules of the game, a code of behaviour. It’s what drives you. Finding a pretext, something that increases your longing. You're looking for a dynamic, a reason.
GD: In Japan people often said the same thing: “You don't create anything if you aren’t experiencing something strong”. I climbed the sacred mountain in Japan "in order to" express myself, "in order to" get to express myself. I also did a performance during a ten-day period of total fasting. I had put a mattress down in the middle of my workshop. People came to see me. The idea was to give rise to something that would be seen as a gesture, an inspiration, an action. Then at a particular time, while I was still fasting and therefore quite weak, I began to rub smooth the walls of my exhibition space. I gathered up all the shavings and piled them up at the entrance to the room. The creation was driven by the state I was in. It was the essential gesture I had to make, to bring the floor back to life, to “reactivate” it, to use a term that was used before. All this is very much linked to the spirit of Butō. Again, it's a situation, as you would say. It's interesting by the way because you are getting me to take another step back to see what I'm doing. The creation of creative situations is indeed the link between everything.
MF: I do think it makes sense. Filliou used to say, "Art is what makes life more interesting than art". I'm also thinking briefly of John Dewey and Richard Shusterman, art as experience, experiencing art, being attentive to experiences in order to live life to the full; and of course a whole section of art history, with events, happenings, performances, programmatic works, the actionists, Fluxus and Gutai. You also mentioned Abramovic and Ulay. We could also mention Chris Burden and the fundamental performances of Valie Export and Carolee Schneeman - although I'm not comparing you to them - and I'm also thinking about what has been called sociological art, or participatory art. Here again, they don’t go about it in the same way but there are situations set up, and there is this will to meet, to share, to confront, to stage, the almost vital will to have an impact on the environment, on the world.
GD: For me, the identity subdivision is precisely a solution and a situation. As I was saying, it allowed me to be totally free and to assume all my longings. So I worked with different characters, including Cile Jelin, a Serbian artist, played by a professional actor, who exhibits in a gallery in Brussels, then in Geneva; also WD16, a Californian graffiti artist who will exhibit in various places in Geneva but who will always miss his flights and never be at the opening; a Senegalese, Souleymane, working with dark stencils à la Pierre Soulages, a Bolivian photographer who only takes pictures of doors, plus many other characters. And we mustn’t forget the works of Ursula Fischer who is a tormented German artist who does expressive and intuitive paintings. This allonym gave me the opportunity to collaborate with my twin daughters, Yuna and Tara, who were 3 years old at the time. A really beautiful creative encounter indelibly marked in my memory. I put myself in these characters’ shoes and I can see how they interact, or sometimes it gives me an idea for a piece of work and I think of a fictional character whose personality could be the inspiration for even more works.
MF : All these creations justifying your appetite to create and justified by Pessoa in a way.
GD: You could say that. And then in 2018, I wrote a text in Barcelona about exploring allonyms to clarify this practice. A kind of manifesto.
MF: But don't you think a manifesto immobilises things when for you it is crucial for something to be missing, in order to give you the energy to experiment, to discover? Don't you think that too much "theorising" of a procedure will make you lose what you love, the flavour and the power to create?
GD: The idea was to name it because what I felt with all this was exhaustion. I didn't know what to think any more. Too many parameters. So and so was doing something so you had to expose the same thing, communicate it, or think about the legitimacy of the creation in question based on the person in question. Make a statement etc. And I must admit that Gilles Dusabe was already taking up quite a bit of my time (laughs).
MF: Wasn’t the text meant to refocus, to channel, not to lose your way?
GD: Yes, and I had to put an end to the career of Cile Jelin, for example. A sudden death brought to an end this allonym’s artistic development. Also because there was too great a distance between us whereas others can quite easily fit into Gilles Dusabe's production. All these artists made me question what I was doing, what the path was that my career was following, and besides, in the end, the creation of the situation you're talking about is probably this path.
In the end, I conclude that it was a dispersion, a split-up, which helped me find myself again. And currently the performative and photographic project, Blackness and Blackless, seems to me one of the most coherent, in the sense that it brings together both the experimental dimension, since I create a specific situation for the camera angle, a plastic dimension, since they are close-ups of male and female bodies, and a social, political and existential dimension. This project portrays the colour of our skin, which is more than just a physical attribute. The skin is perceived as the basis for a classification, nourished by stereotypes, at the origin of racist opinions and behaviours. Through this series of photographs devoted to "black" skin, my aim is to have you reflect upon colour of the skin beyond what is visually apparent. It is the artistic result of my relatives' experiences, exposed to discriminatory comments and situations based on their physical attributes. It is a work deeply anti-racist as well as a deeply humanistic work, and I feel very comfortable with it.
MF : But these question of racism, segregation, crimes against “being different”, social and political injustices, you've already asked them in Nyabarongo le Fleuve - Cemetery into which women and children were thrown during the genocide in Rwanda, in The Hundred Days, which tells the long series of horrors again linked to the genocide in Rwanda, in Tribute to David Kato, the murdered LGBT activist, and in The Hidden Kiss which recounts impossible love in various religious or social contexts.
GD: Yes, you're absolutely right, but with Blackness and Blackless, I get to a certain universality just as in Tower of Power or The Inevitable. But while we’re talking about it, Tribute to David Kato, The Hidden Kiss and But Who Benefits From Development Aid?, the title of which is perfectly explicit, were all presented by Momar Seck, then curator of the African Contemporary Art exhibition, where I represented Rwanda. To create these works, I went to Rwanda alone for several weeks. Regarding the tribute to David Kato, it should be noted that a Ugandan magazine, edited by an extremist Christian, published photos of about a hundred homosexuals, denouncing them as monsters. David Kato went to court and won but he was murdered for it.
MF: Is But Who Benefits From Development Aid? to be taken literally?
GD: Yes, people have already made this remark. I’ve been told that this work had an explicit side to it but I did it deliberately. My goal was to communicate, clearly, and to have people understand a situation of imbalance and even economic injustice between the Western World and Africa. As for Hidden Kiss, there is always this humanistic aspect, but this image is also part of a series of works of art revisiting history. But when I think about it, it's interesting, because this whole discussion inspires me to continue to create more specifically situations and pieces, rather than objects, which have an impact on the viewer, or objects considered as tools, means. When Olafur Eliasson visited my studio in Japan, he asked me about the need to make objects. I still wonder about that.
MF: Where are you in your Blackness and Blackless project?
GD: As things stand, I'm going to complete this project. Then I'm going to scrutinise the whole thing, look for a place and a context, and prepare as well as possible for the large-scale Dak'Art Biennale 2020 exhibition. I have been selected for the international exhibition under the theme of Ĩ Ndaffa / Forger / Out of Fire, which refers to the founding act of African creation. These monochrome photographs will be presented framed but also on large format wallpaper in the public area, two versions and presentation devices that will bring the work to the spectator in a different way. I just want brown skin to be seen as being rich in shades and nuances and not transparent and denigrated, that it be contemplated and celebrated but not as western eyes see it, that is as a sort of exoticism. I want the spectator to see these dilated pores that present themselves to others in their intimacy and without fear. This skin filled with its vast history and experiences brings to light all the suffering and legacy that this colour implies. This organ, unjustly subject to discrimination and “colourism”, is courageously forging a more egalitarian and just present and future within our contemporary societies.
CONVERSATION 2
MF: Hello again, my dear Gilles. We meet again for the second part of our interview after a first part which was rich and exciting and which gave us access to your roots as an artist, to the essential chaos that is at the origin of your universe. After taking stock during one or two discussions off camera, we have decided by mutual agreement to dig deeper and find out more about the artist you are today: Gilles Dusabe.
So I ask you, in a word. What is Gilles Dusabe doing? What has become of him? Is he a crystallisation, a condensation?
GD: What you are asking me is complex, but I would say that he is wandering around like a contemporary situationist. He's constantly on the move and remains a nomad like his predecessor, Gilles Gabriel Grassioulet, on the lookout for anything that might cause him to alter and redefine the trajectory, the trajectories. He is travelling through a jumble of inspirations, creative thoughts, meandering processes, plastic discoveries, passing doubts and solid but at the same time ephemeral convictions. I possess the strength and clarity necessary to convert a strong emotion and experience into another experience for the spectator. He spends his time travelling between Rwanda and Switzerland but he does not define himself only by these two countries because he does not see himself as having taken root but rather as being rootless in a void of possibilities and encounters. He is a bit of a hyphen, a pause, a silence between two sounds, an opening, a transition, an airport, always about to adapt to a new situation. In fact, if I had to describe myself as an object, I would be an adapter, the idea of facilitating the connection and communication between geographical areas and peoples, always looking for a device that enables a thought, a concept and an experience to adapt to alternative, particular conditions.
With this in mind, I have oriented the Blackness and Blackless project more towards a pictorial work with acrylic paint representing an extension to the infinite perception of the skin. The new project is called Matter, Meta Skin and the Universe. I’ve been working on it non-stop for months in my studio but it isn’t yet open to the public. If you take the trouble, it is possible to see beyond the tiny particles that define the tone of our skin. It is possible to break through the barrier of racist discourse fed by fear and ignorance. It is possible to dismantle discriminatory and segregationist policies based on stereotypes and project yourself towards another dimension of the skin. These works are composed of a multitude of tiny, multicoloured dots, a metaphor for universal diversity. You plunge with a certain dizziness into a world where colours mix and overlap, face each other and intertwine until these dots become communities and from them societies are born, replicating themselves ad infinitum, to the point where they form a single entity: humanity. A multi-dimensional journey from the microcosm to the macrocosm, starting with the atom via the skin and on to the universe.
MF: But could you tell us more about your African identity?
GD: Actually, I am a man of my time. A contemporary man who is in constant movement and transition. I travel and I redefine myself at each port and at each stage. Geographical wanderings are now easy given our fast means of transport, well, I suppose it depends. Indeed, as a Westerner, Franco-Swiss, I can travel to any country without even a visa most of the time. On the other hand as an African, Rwandan, it’s not the case. How absurd and revolting reality can be! Tiken Jah Fakoly's song, Opening the Borders. is a hymn to the physical and mental openness of illegal immigrants, to the inhuman conditions they have to suffer and to the need for a greater humanistic dimension, of which the West claims to be the cradle. I became a Rwandan citizen a few years ago because this host country opened its arms to me with dignity, respect and generosity. I am extremely proud of this and I take this new identity with great responsibility and seriousness. Far from considering it a cultural adoption, I am totally involved. I have invested in the community to make injustice more visible. I am not a man who calculates. I am intuitive, a man who dreams of normality for a person of varying shades of brown in Europe and a person of varying shades of beige in Africa, of a normal life without justification and preconception, a simple acceptance of who I am beyond the colour of my skin, as I would venture to hope for a black person in Europe. I am an artist who is fortunate enough to be able to express himself freely, always seeking out others without fear or mistrust to build metaphorical bridges between cultures and individuals.
MF: What do you think of this sentence by Susan Sontag: "Do stuff. Be clenched, curious. Not waiting for inspiration's shove or society's kiss on your forehead. Pay attention. It's all about paying attention. Attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager. Stay eager.” It seems to fit you like a glove.
GD: It defines me well in fact, I think, without being too presumptuous. Being attentive to what is happening in the world, keeping a watchful eye, not just consuming the images but studying every detail carefully as you contemplate them, maintaining an inquisitive attitude towards others and not allowing comfort and materialism to put you to sleep. It is the plague that lies in wait for the artist when life is too cosy. We must run and find that state of emotional pursuit. We must lay ourselves bare and take risks so that our eyelids don’t get heavy and gently close without our realising it. The resultant awakening could turn out to be very harsh.
MF: Creation, here and now, creation tomorrow, the need to create that galvanises you, the need to produce forms that vibrate with multidimensional content, forms that you want to address, to show; if you had to define it in a few words, is it sustained by a longing for emancipation, for freedom or the need to transmit something? Or all of them at the same time? What is this energy that moves you?
GD: Well, as a committed artist, I address cultural, social and political issues such as personal freedom, social justice, equity or human rights. I am a transmitter but often I am not alone when I create. For example, Kato’s strength and courage led me to mount the Tribute to David Kato project in his honour, though it was especially a tribute to the members of the LGBT community still living in hiding in Uganda, Africa and elsewhere. I am not alone in my creation. I can feel the ancestors encouraging me, whispering ideas and inspiration to me. The victims of genocide often call me, asking me not to abandon them. All I do is listen to them, see them and respect them, and fashion their memories so that history does not forget them. In my project, Apparition, One Summer’s Day, I aim my camera at a fantastic world populated by unreal yet sometimes real beings, a world that many of us live in, each in their own way. Some people talk about protective entities that take care of them on a daily basis. Others evoke souls on a journey, whose paths cross for a short while. For others, they are loved ones who still caringly accompany them through life. They are here, with kindness and silence, leading me to connect with the universe and bring the real world and the beyond closer together in the style of the luminous artist, Cai Guo-Qiang, who has been my inspiration for over 20 years and remains one of my absolute references. When sculpting The Agony of Death or photographing the fluxus sculptures in The Hundred Days, I felt the energies and my hands were as if guided. They were not alone. I am very grateful to have this chance to express myself again and experience these worlds because it is a privilege that we are not sufficiently aware of in our daily lives and that too often eludes us. Let us not out of fear and superstition turn our backs on death. Death enables life. To feel, to walk, to trace, to draw, to scribble, to shape, to photograph, to film, to meet, to breathe, to create; there are so many experiences to live to the full in order to be an artist for such a short time before death invites me to its party and others take on the twists and turns that are the artist’s fate.