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15
Hello Anna, 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?
I must start with a Hello, and thank you for inviting me to give this interview! Being an artist has led me to this point that i have to speak through myself and to be honest, while doing it, it's a big part of my identity, and i would like to believe that i'm not the only one, as being an artist is speaking and bringing something to the „table” which comes out of your mind, rather it's an artwork, performance, dance, theatre etc.
I find it important not to push my opinion into objective categories, as it makes more of a mess, than a clear point of view. This is the main scenario of creating an artwork, looking through myself in to the world, catching thoughts, feeling, moments, creating and communicating (mostly in that exact order). I must quote Rene Descartes „I think, therefore I am”, and this is the answer to, finding your identity. Every work reveals a part of who i am and how, or what i think. It depends on the projects I’m in are they in some way connected to the cultural roots or not, i have some of this in mind for the future, as well, but mainly art is multifunctional language and it should be understandable worldwide.
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?
I always have been doing arts, since i can remember myself, big thanks to my parents, who were supportive all the way. The biggest interest appeared in high school, when i was a teenager my favourite books and characters were antique philosophers, like Socrates, Plato, Aristotle etc. I liked it because it helped me to express myself in words and understand my feelings better. (as we all probably know how it feels when you are a teenager! :D ) Also i found it fascinating that you could speak about different things like human qualities, in the analytical manner i have never heard before. This really inspires me and i understood that i also have something to say. I'm not at all comparing myself to the world's greatest, but there is something interesting in it, and i think it’s the ability to see yourself in the book, to empathize. So i try to do it in my art as well... find some sort of real life feeling, anger, pain, curiosity and inject it into my artwork. So maybe the viewer could empathize it to his life as well. Make the artwork real and honest. I'm not afraid to show the less attractive parts of life, like the struggle, which sometimes happens to artist during the creative process. My work „The shape of Thoughts” speaks directly about it.
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?
Also a big part of my inspiration comes from American artist Bruce Nauman. I don't want to point out one specific work, as i admire a lot of them, but the favourite ones are the videos made in the studio, during 1968.
Nauman’s thoughts about who artist is, and what art is in general, have helped me in some of the most difficult parts of my artistic practice. One of them I can quote – „A lot of things i was doing didn't make sense so i quit doing them. That left me alone in the studio: this is turn raised the fundamental question of what an artist does when left alone in his studio. My conclusion was that [if] i was an artist and I was in the studio must be art... At this point art became more of an activity and less of a product." (Bruce Nauman, Robert C.Morgan, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002, 122. Page) This is just one of his great thoughts, but basically it is like a confirmation, that thinking is also creating. The key part is also communication, if you are a thinker, why not shear it? I try to do it in my works, if explanation in needed i provide it, but in perfect world art should speak by itself, deliver a message, make the viewer feel like an investigator, to raise interest.
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.
I find inspiration in a lot of things, but basically it comes from curiosity or some sort of feeling i want to transfer to my work. If we speak of memory i have one specific work, where memory glimpse of my childhood was a turning point of creating „The closed eyes landscape”. I remembered the patterns which i got when closed my eyes during a road trip with my family to country side, i was completely rapt, looking to sun passing by car windows, playing in tree branches, all with my eyes closed. This made me think (as a grown up)... Does all of people see patterns like that when they close they eyes? I had to discover it! So i made the experiment, ask 52 people to look into a special device which i made with their eyes closed and afterward paint the image they saw during the process. The result inspired me to create an artwork.
So substantially i can say that it depends on the project/artwork, rather the memory is starting point, or i use the collective memory as some sort of satire. But i guess.. It is a crucial part of any artist, as the memory is our own hard-drive (joke) where to collect impressions.
ents are depicted in order to clarify my inner thoughts. In the last couple of years I was preoccupied by the notions of evil in relation with the human sphere. My first project questioned the self in a series of works called "What's inside your head Florina?" This practical research inquired the destructive side of adolescent thoughts. Afterwards I started analyzing my family members with an emphasis on old family photos that revealed tensions and discrepancies between them. The project was called "Sagrada Familia" and it was also an inquiry into my life background. Then my attention focused on the world around me and on the unstable social environment. I started the project "Glimpses of a personal Hell" where I translated the pessimistic aspects of the present into images of my friends with their personal demons. I choose to combine fantastic with real elements to represent the silent acceptance of the everyday life. My latest project is "Day for Night" in which I analyze the tendency of the human mind to sink into darkness and the easiness with which it accepts it.
What is the role of technique in your practice? In particular are there any constraints or rules that you follow when creating?
My body of works is widely based on charcoal and water based paints but I also learned about the Flemish technique and started playing with oil painting. Recently I endeavored in a different approach to acrylic paint scratching its surface and focusing more on drawing. I like to play and discover new things so I have no constraints regarding technique as long as the materials prove to be durable. I became quite fond of scratching surfaces so right now I’m working on a project that involves engraving glass. I’m a curious artist when it comes to diverse ways of representation.
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.