OBJECTS IN THE MIRROR ARE CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR
Excerpt from a conversation
with Nami Salim
Collage GT86, 2022
Having this exchange and knowing your work for quite some years, I would say that identity and biography are kind of key elements.
Identity is much stronger to me, it defines the present and the future, whereas biography is determined by the past, a story you tell yourself or stuff others think to know about you, eventually proven by some random facts. The way I use identity is much more about what an individual made out of pre-conditions. According to some proverb, you are whatever room you're in.
Irony and humor seem to be very important for your work and your observation of modern life and its absurd tendencies.
I would define humor and irony as intellectual tools to transform the rational and limited mind and to overcome cultural imprints and social patterns. There is this phrase from the Vedic scriptures that tells that it is all about the state where you see arising objects as one – as part of one body – no matter if it's a piece of shit or diamonds. That idea is very essential to my work.
There are a lot of references to art history, cinema and pop culture...
Yes, because in that role of an artist, I am not so interested in specific things, my focus is always more on the big drift. In that sense I use low culture combined with high culture and high culture in a low culture appearance.
From a multi-cultural perspective, your works almost exclusively exist and play within the Western context. Why in that bubble?
Being born in the inappropriately called "first world" is crucial for my existence in general and puts me into an ambivalent position of living privileged on one hand and condemn that very privilege on the other. It made me – l am part of it and it is part of me. If I would focus on another "culture", there could be too much admiration. I need a certain amount of anger in order to make work.
Big brands are another recurrent element and I suppose it's more than profanation.
Most major brands are recognized simply by the design of their logo and a specific color coding. In mass culture "corporate identity" is a soft power and one could argue that these brands act as agents in an ongoing "war" whose effect, or at least side-effect, is to divide humanity into "us" and "them" – into consumers and those who don't have access, often for political or social reasons and also those who don't want to participate out of choice. So it's certainly not a profanation, but rather an attempt to squat the place that these brands occupy in the general perception and in the collective memory.
M/OTHER, 2012
That leads to the notion of 'otherness' as a psychological phenomenon but also as a subject in philosophy, which you kind of summed up in a piece titled M/OTHER. Again, in the appearance of a well-known cooperation.
The dimension of this work in particular also grew over time. The original idea was based on the Lacanian concept of "the other", which is juxtaposed with this huge theme, not only in psychology but also in mythology, of "mother". And then, of course, there is the almost ironic distinction that this one letter makes. All of this comes together in this work with the use of the yellow M, as depicted in the so-called "golden arches" as the logo of probably the most famous fast food chain in the world, which incidentally caused controversy in the 1960s as it can also be interpreted as a symbol for feeding breasts... the subliminal sexual symbolism is already evident here. "Us vs. Them", in all its nuances and manifestations (Mother/Other), also stands for the formation of identity through clear demarcation and thus also as the source of all conflicts. In my research, I also came across the 'Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention', which essentially claims that two countries with McDonald's franchise restaurants would never go to war with each other. An overly optimistic capitalist peace theory from the 1990s that has since been proven wrong several times.
Appropriation in terms of correcting the way things are?
At least, I try to invert the logic of those concepts in order to find the essence of new meaning within and to expand them. It's like a small rebellion against the acceptance of the current state as the only possible one in a post-utopian world.
I know that you don't use terms like art and artist without some hesitation.
In the end, these are just categories and definitions. I try to bring things am interested in a medium I understand at the same time I transform them into something else. The results can be seen as footprints of the process or... metaphors.
'Metaphor-maker' is this how you would describe what you do?
Yes, in a way, but at the same time it also feels like a failure, like running in circles, as little fundamentally new is emerging. But perhaps this feeling of failure is equivalent to the last steps on the springboard and the decisive moment is the one at the edge, as we know...
Running in Circles, 2017