J: Ko wai koe? Would you like to introduce yourself?

C: I am a French artist living in Norway. I recently graduated from my Masters in Fine Art in Bergen. 

I’m a paper artist. I work with paper.

J: When you did your Masters, what did you get from it in terms of how you have come to Vishovgrad now? What were the steps you took from Masters to get here?

C: Giving more freedom to the process and the material itself, is what I learnt last year. The paper is living by itself and my sculptures are doing what they want to do, it’s more a collaboration between me and the sculptures than just me making something. I guess that’s what happened during my master project, I made books, in the end they didn’t look like books. Here in Vishovgrad, I accepted this part of the process, I didn’t know or plan anything. I just came, then decided to make sticks in paper. They are just like, they are kind of, I chose the initial shape, and they kind of chose their final shape. They dry in a certain way. They are more fragile on some parts, I don’t plan. Some of them broke. But that’s nice. I finish one and I start again with the same process. Recently I wrote about that, I think the sculptures are doubting. I think it sounds better in French actually, les sculptures qui doutent rather than doubting sculpture. It’s too difficult to pronounce. 

J: What does les sculptures qui doutent mean to you?

C: It means sculptures that doubt, rather than doubting sculpture. I like the French sentence because it is an active way of doubting, more than the doubt used as an adjective. 

J: The word “doubt” is how you explain your process?

C: Yes, kind of like the methodology. I started to accept the doubt because I have done some projects in the past, for example I never knew how to write where I have this phrase: hoping it will form a sentence. I realized my sentences are never straightforward, I am hoping, I am doubting, I am trying, I tend to. I like paper because it is a modest material. I like its modesty. I can use paper the same way I use words. Modesty, doubt, but not by shyness. So I guess the project I make here is about all that. I want to.  

J: When you say modest is that kind of like, ephemerality or temporal?

C: In most of my projects, if I don’t use glue, I can fold everything back. Things can be folded back into folders, or if I make books, they can fold and become really tiny. So then everything can be moved somewhere else, it’s like nothing happened – and then I can unfold everything and it will take up a lot of space again. But if we need that space for someone else for example it can fold back again. I like that quality. Actually even with the sticks, where I used glue, I could put water on them and they could take another shape, shrink. So maybe the flexibility makes the modesty, the material is really light and economical. 

J: Are you thinking about sustainability? 

C: I thought a lot about my own sustainability, it started during my bachelors degree. It didn’t make sense to me to make huge sculptures that I will destroy at the end because they couldn’t be stored. I liked the idea that I could work with A4 sheets, tape them together then un-tape them and then put them in a folder, and that would be the whole project, in a folder. That’s where it started, so it was more like space saving, time saving and also symbolically – it is an accessible material that everybody knows, it has its own language, we recognize it as an A4 sheet.

J: Everybody brings some kind of context to it or understanding and then you have got an applied language on top of that, adding to the layers of your works too. Did you bring paper here with you?

C: I bought A4 paper when I arrived, and I brought with me the light newspaper paper which I like because it’s so light, it can fly away. When I hang it on the wall it’s falling all the time. I work a lot with that one. 

J: You already had some materials from your past that you have brought to connect between the two. 

C: I brought that light paper as a starting point, because it is kind of where I left my last project. 

The first thing I did here was to paint one of the sheet in blue. In one of my last shows, I had a lot of them painted in blue so I thought it was nice to have it as a starting point of something new.

J: Funny because you have painted that blue, now I see it everywhere. Those flowers, it’s that blue in a particular light. Walking up to Dansha [the shop of the village] and they are all on the right hand side. It’s funny that they shut in the middle of the day, only here in the morning. 

C: They can also be purple sometimes.

J: So you brought paper with you from your previous practice, can you tell me about how through this experience you’ve seen your artist practice grow or change within this environment that you are working in which is quite unique?

C: I can speak about how I ended up finding the process, maybe step by step

J: It might not have arrived with you yet, it might happen later

C: So I came with the paper and bought some more, it’s my comfort zone. I can do a lot with just that. 

I was thinking about doubt and also about support because of all these support systems that are around town. Branches holding other branches or pipes, tubes, it’s so nice. Support is a nice word to think about, it’s part of this family of qualities I like: doubt, support, modesty. 

So that’s when I decided to make casts of a stick, and I wanted those paper sticks to support something, maybe words, I work a lot with words, they would support some kind of doubt? Then I realized they could just support each other or even support themselves. As they are doubting. They don’t have to support the words, the words could be some kind of statements that would be on the walls around. 

I have this sentence: doubt is my support system that I wrote here. I came also thinking about questions marks. For some reason I have had an obsession with question marks for some time now. They are some kind of drawing, they are their own language and they are also international so they don’t need words to question. So came the sentence, the question mark dances a language we don’t speak, it came as a collage of words. I wrote a lot since I arrived here, those are a few of the words.

The sentence was: a language I don’t speak originally and then I thought that as we are several artists here in this context, it’s not only about me. We are in this country that is not our home, together in this little, small garden. So I wrote 

WE don’t speak, we don’t speak instead 

It is a bit about our experience here but it is also about the language of paper, if the words are next to each other with the sculptures then maybe the sculptures are the question marks. It is a back and forth between the words and the sculptures, and us, so yeah. 

J: [pointing at one stick] Is that a natural collapse? 

C: It happened by itself, I did the same thing each time when I made these casts. When I removed the paper layer from the stick, the paper did the rest, the sculptures dried by themselves, bending, and ended up the way they are now.

I was wondering if I should cast several shapes of sticks, then I remembered the conversation we had at dinner once. We were saying that our art practice is just the same project again and again, just slightly different each times.

J: that was a good conversation actually

C: so then I am making the same thing, again and again, eventually I will find something new or maybe not. I don’t know. 

The sculptures are all the same, all a bit different 

J: everyday is a ritual

C: yea

J: and they are made of how many layers?

C: four each 

J: and its the same stick 

C: hmmm [yes] 

J: and then, how do you choose to keep the stick with the paper as its natural colour and when do you choose when to use blue?

C: you mean the colour, the colour question is a bit tricky in my opinion, I don’t really know how to answer, its more a question of attraction 

J: like aesthetics

C: I guess we are always drawn to colours and eventually we pick some we like. I never worked with brown before, but I think I use it here because there is so much brown around 

J: they kind of speak, environmentally your colour choice 

C: yeah, sometimes in my project the colour choice also comes from words. If I have a text about a landscape, even though it will not be a new expression of it, the sculptures, some words of colour that are in the text will end up in the space. So those colours, blue and brown also come from things that I have written here, but I think it is really an attraction 

I mean, I think colours are their own language, so I have never been quite sure how to speak about them in my work

J: probably something that like might be the most intuitive part of 

C: I think it is the most intuitive part yes. I never really mixed my colours, I pick colours, I like the ones that are already pre-made and that have names. I like this idea of picking ultramarine blue for one project, and have its name in the text for example. So in the project here it’s the first time that I mixed some brown actually.

J: thats cool 

C: hmm 

J: is that part of your ethical, ethics when you make work? How is your practice grounded or values that are a contribution to others? 

This might not be important

C: I don’t know, I mean thinking about this work, I don’t know, I think hmmmmm, cause I’ve been thinking about the relationship between my work and other artists, how they support it, and the audience. Or for example about taking part in group shows, I hope my work can take care of someone else’s work, those kinds of relationships through the work, support. I’ve done it a lot through text, some of my works will mention others people’s work. For example in I never knew how to write, the installation contains names of artists that inspire me. But for the context of my work here, I haven’t thought about it. 

Language is a tool that we can shape as we want, it can also shape the work. It can be much more than just words so. 

J: Is there anything you want the audience to see? You don’t have to say yes to that

C: hmmmmm, I guess in some projects, hmmmm about language and perception, naming things in order for them to exist, this whole thing, with sculptures, or question marks, if I name them something else in the text, then they are something else. 

I think its moving from project to project, sometimes it’s just about poetry, its a lot about poetry 

J: What texts are you informed by? 

C: A lot of people, actually I have a list of writers here

J: I knew you would have a list 

C: I have it here because I printed it on the wall of my master show, all these women on the wall. Screen printed on the wall. So that’s my chosen family of artists and writers at the moment. There is not the last name, only their first name, because they are sort of my friends 

I didn’t make myself alone, my work comes from them 

[ List: Deborah Levy, Maggie Nelson, Chloé Delaume, Olivia Laing, Sylvia Bächli, Sarah Tritz, Laura Lamiel, Melissa Gordon, Wendy Delorme, Liv Strömquist, Monique Wittig, Lily Van Der Stokker]