You are exhibiting your works alongside Cy Twombly. What does this dialogue with a series of iconic paintings inspire in you?
I think Cy Twombly was one of the very first artists I engaged as a young student, or not even a student, I guess. I was still in the school, not in the art school. At the time, I was very eager to read and to see any art book I could find. One day, a book of Cy Twombly fall in my hands, and I was immediately taken by it. I was immediately drawn to it and interested. Over the years, I had opportunities, but not many actually, to see the work of art of Cy Twombly. I think I’ve never, ever seen a retrospective or anything like that. This series of art, like Miró could be another one, for example, that had this very delicate way of dealing with signs. Sometimes some people will say that they have this childlike aspect to their painting or to their traces. I don't think this is childish at all because it's incredibly sophisticated and delicate and how he's not holding too tight on the signs. He's leaving the signs very loose. This is actually a beautiful example because you have a sign that is repeated from painting to painting, and it's changing. At the beginning, it's a sun, the sun becomes an eye, the eye becomes a boat, the boat becomes a closed eye, and so on and so on. The sign is fluctuating from painting to painting, and it's never closed into a stiff meaning. This is something I relate very much in my own work.
Your works display fragility and instability. What kind of attention do you wish to receive from the visitors?
I will just tell them to approach them with openness of heart, I will say. About the fragility of the works. When Emma Lavigne told me about the project, it was about ecology, and it was very much about a little bit of the darkness of the times we have ahead. And also probably because we come from two years of pandemic, and with at least myself, I've been evaluating a lot of things in my own life and in my own work. When she told me the project and her intentions, I told her that the way I felt I could relate to her ideas was to do something the most delicate and the most vulnerable possible. So my idea to deal with this fragility of life is literally showing the most fragile and vulnerable work I could do.
What is your relationship with nature and the non-human? And what kind of relationship do you wish to encourage regarding this?
Before wanting to be an artist, I wanted to be a biologist. I guess when I was around 15, 14 years old, I realised that I will never be a good biologist because I was really bad at mathematics and chemistry.
The good thing about being an artist is that you can work with whatever subject “passionates” you. I can still work with nature without the pain of the exact sciences. My relation to nature is that first and foremost, I understand that I am myself nature. We are all self-nature. We have been trusting this idea that I think is extremely stupid, that the nature is something detached from us, something that we don't belong to it. We are out of nature. Nature has been like a background for our ideas, for our actions, or maybe even a place where we can go and extract whatever is of interest. But by living through this paradigm of separations, we have been able to destroy. Almost we are in the blink of destroying the planet. So I think we really need an urgently a new paradigm that recognises that we are not detached the matter, but we are just part of it.
"I think we really need an urgently a new paradigm that recognises that we are not detached the matter, but we are just part of it."
You have just finished the installation; how do you feel?
First of all, it's a luxury to be able to have this dialogue with Cy Twombly. I'm very curious to see how people move through the space and how they engage to the different works. And I have the feeling that it conveys a sense of breathing because these works, somehow, they really invite you to delve into them, to look them from very close. It's like you are becoming very small and walking through the cut of the branch. And then afterwards, paying attention to it, then you detach and go into the whole. And then you again go into one of the paintings and then detach for him and go into the whole. So there's this moment of concentration and expansion that I think people will be able to spend a lot of time here if they want.
How do you use light in this installation?
It's just these lead filaments that are going from floor to ceiling, and they are reacting to many different things. They are reacting to the presence of the public. They are reacting to the sound of the flood we have in the space from time to time. But they are also reacting differently according to the different weather we have. For example, if it's very cold, they react more crisply. If it's hot, as it will be in a few months, they will be more lazy. The same way that the weather affects us, the weather is also affecting the lines and its behavior. This is also a way of connecting the work, the inside of the museum with the outside. Having the exhibition to have somehow a life of its own. It's beyond my control. I don't know what will happen with the weather.
What does the title "Avant l’Orage” inspire in you? What is the storm that you believe threatens us?
I mean, the storm that is really coming is that of climate change. Actually, climate change is a very shallow way of putting it. Maybe this is very ambitious to say, but it's totally true. With my work, I really hope that people are able to understand and engage with nature in a different way. I'm trying to, maybe not only with this work we are seeing here, but with my body of work and my actions of every day and my interviews, I'm trying to convey an idea that we really need to change the paradigm in where we are living and start understanding the world in in a different way.
Which season are you most looking forward to?
I've been living in Brazil for the last 18 years, and the seasons are really not as different to each other as they are here. So, this is something I've been missing quite a lot. I will say that now, after 18 years, I really can see the difference in between summer and winter in Brazil, but I was totally unable when I arrived there. I will say in the middle of winter, Let's go to the beach. And they said, No, but this winter, it was like, But it's 27 degrees. I'm going to spend one year now in Barcelona. Starting now, this is the last Christmas, and I'm very much looking forward to go through all the spring, summer, autumn, and winter again. So I will say I'm really looking forward for all of them.
