‘The time of history was only dates, dates in art history.’
I am an artist, not an intellectual.
My research is primarily sensory. Almost every part of my body thinks, and my brain participates. If I had been born deaf and mute, I would have been able to adapt better than others. I believe that contemporary society tends to de-animalise, and this society is certainly the least suitable habitat for people like me.
I began to draw and paint a unified, heavy, thinking and sensual body, occupying a space: that body and that space gradually became mine.
The body is naked: the difference between drawing a monkey and drawing a snake is (it sounds like a joke) that the monkey is hairy and is like drawing a dressed man, while in the snake I find the desperate vitality of a naked body.
If I was an animal, I would be a feline. But in reality, I haven't completely lost these powers (for example, I am short-sighted but I can see quite well in the dark, I have retained that sense which is called instinct in animals and the sixth sense in humans).
I have more empathy for animals and suffer more for them than for my fellow humans (read this little book by William Burroughs, ‘Among the Cats’).
Primitive societies tried to maintain a relationship with nature and a sense of belonging to a cycle in which birth and death are the extremes of a very random life.
My means of understanding all this are my drawings and paintings. Knowing that my time is running out makes me furious: like a caged tiger, I cannot rest, then I lick my paws and start drawing, painting and dreaming again.
My relationship with institutions, museums or galleries is practically non-existent.
Exhibiting requires too much energy: working on commission, in a hurry...
However, I like participating in group exhibitions, comparing my work with that of others, a stimulating experience that allows me to push beyond the limits of my personal research.
Being both a woman and a painter is not difficult; on the contrary, I am in my own universe when I am in the studio where I go every day.
Men are often more concerned with power and politics, so...