Interview with Jenny Saville

 

Is the exploration of your body throughout your art merely physical, or is there also a conceptual line of inquiry intertwined within it?

I suppose that the more I’ve done it, the more history is involved in the work. So I’m quite process-led, to be honest. Even though I work with the body, in terms of it being my physical subject, it’s the subject of the materials that I work in that leads the work. In any of these drawings, I always think – before thinking specifically about the body – what can I do in these materials that can only exist in these materials? Whether it’s paint, whether it’s using drips, stains or shadows. All of those things are not necessarily about the body, but they feed into using the body. I use the body in the same way that the artists in the past that I like always used the body – Picasso, Velázquez, Titian – they all worked with the body and it’s in my nature to deal with the human body. It’s the greatest art that I’ve seen in the past… ancient sculptural images of bodies. So it’s never lost the fascination for me. And it’s difficult! It’s a life’s work really, it’s not something you can just be good at; it is years and years and hours of trying to make something interesting with it. So that’s the drive… and then trying to make something that’s relevant now in the material that I work in. But the painting or drawing is different to writing a book or making film or music. The difference for me is that music, film, or anything like that, runs in a sequence. In order to understand it, you have to have a narrative or a sequence. But painting and drawing is a singular moment when you encounter it. And you encounter a moment that is a document of a journey that it took the artist to make it. You are in the presence of that artist. So when you stand in front of a great Velázquez portrait, you stand almost where he stood. I’ve never forgotten the magic of that… I love the magic of it. It holds me to try and explore how I can heighten that experience.

Your bodies experience anxiety, strangeness, sorrow… Do you recognize yourself in your multiple representations?

I think you are in everything that you make, to be honest. But I like to include everything, so I don’t want to say, oh I don’t want to show the sadness, I don’t want to show violence. I want to encompass the whole world when I make art, I don’t want to exclude anything. Why would I want to do that? I’m a real believer in following my instinct; the best work I’ve ever made has been through my instinct. When I try to be too clever or too analytical, it doesn’t work. Sometimes, when making work that’s almost theoretical, the process of making that work leads you to an instinct that makes the next work, and makes it better. I don’t ask myself too many questions during the making of the work because I follow my instinct. I have even noticed when I’ve been in the studio, that when I might be writing something down or drawing something that is a sort of theory for a painting I might make or a set of works that I might make, and on the other side of the room I’ve got a stained canvas with a footprint or a scribble on it, my eye keeps going towards that and it holds a truth which is greater than the truth that I’m trying to get at through over-analyzing something. That was a lesson to me quite early on – that there’s something within that truth; that there are truths greater than knowledge. And if there’s a knowledge, sometimes you have to let go and follow your instinct to get to that greater truth. I think you have to be prepared to do that. If you over-analyze or over-critique something, there’s almost no point in doing it. There’s no risk involved. I like the risk and the change and the transformation that’s possible in the making, and for me, that gets you to a greater art. The art that I like involves that risk. It’s beyond reason. That’s what you’re trying to get… truth beyond reason. Because if you could write it down or you could speak about it, you wouldn’t need to make it.

The figures in your drawings overlap as a plurality of identities. Your face is present in most of your portraits. Is identity an important subject for you?

It’s not really my identity… I lend my body to myself, that’s the way I’ve always looked at it. But sometimes people aren’t prepared to put themselves into as painful a position as my body is prepared to be in. I’ve been conscious – since I was very young – that one day I’m going to be under the ground, I’m going to be dust, I’m going to be nothing. So what’s the risk? There’s no real risk. What could it be? Judgment? That I have a different body? That I don’t have an ugly body? I don’t care about that. I care about trying to use my capacity as a human. How far can I go as a human to make something that’s interesting? It’s not really about whether it’s my identity or not. It’s about a human identity. If you look at the Velázquez dwarf paintings, there’s an identity that goes across all of humanity. Or a great Rembrandt portrait – it covers everybody. I’m not an old woman in a Rembrandt painting; I don’t know what it’s like to be a seventy year old woman, but I feel the humanity when I look at that painting, so that’s the way I’ve looked at it. If my body can offer me the ability to get to something interesting, than I use my own body. If I can’t, then I work with somebody else. So it’s not about this endless self portrait, it’s just that I’m available and it’s the ability to use my body to say something or to get to the emotion that I’m trying to get at in the work. I was thinking about the amount of selfies we have; we live in a very narcissistic situation now, where people are loading images of themselves all the time. And I don’t really like photographs of myself. I don’t take that many pictures of myself as a portrait. Since I’ve had children, I photograph my children because you just do. But before I had children, I didn’t really take that many photographs of myself, other than for work. So in that regard, it’s not to try and show myself. It’s completely against that idea of this narcissistic culture of the selfie. I don’t work with that at all. I think it’s interesting that we want to do that, now we want to record ourselves. In order to exist, you have to document it. If you go to any museum, everyone’s got iPads or iPhones photographing everything. It’s almost as though if you haven’t documented it, it hasn’t really existed.

Your series of photographs made with Glen Luchford, who specializes in the field of fashion, are the antithesis of this phenomenon. In what ways did the exploration of the body lead you to this experience of submitting your body to the stress of being squashed?

I made that work when I was in New York and I was working alongside a plastic surgeon, so I was observing operations. I was fascinated with the process of plastic surgery, or cosmetic surgery, where, if you talk to the women who were there, they would say: if only I had these breasts, or this type of body, I would be normal. They had convinced themselves that they were sick and that they needed to be made normal. But it was a fictional normal; it was this idea that a certain type of body would make them more acceptable or normal in their own head. So I was interested in the process before and after. I was going to libraries and looking at lots of images of bodies and they would say, this is the nose before and this is the nose after. So I became interested in the process in between. I was lucky enough to be able to go into a surgery and I saw breast implants, liposuction… this was at the time when, if you’d said to people, I’m going to watch liposuction, they wouldn’t have known what that was. They didn’t know that word, whereas all of us now know that word. Everybody knows the word liposuction. To see a surgeon’s fist inside a body – moving a body around – the malleability of that was just an incredible experience… really powerful. And I realized that we don’t really own the interior of our body, we give that over to medicine. So even though we’ve got this interior, it’s not really ours. Because whenever there’s anything wrong with it, we hand ourselves over to a doctor and they sort it out and we go back to living an exterior life. I got interested in how I could talk about that, how I could show the tapestries of the interior life – literally the interior fabric of the body. And as I was going in and out of Manhattan to my studio, I saw commuters squashing against glass and it felt like the same thing, so that’s what triggered the idea to do it. And then working with a fashion photographer… he was taking my picture for British Vogue, for an article and he saw what I was doing when I was trying to get these pictures and said, I can help you. So it was a completely natural process and almost like working with the enemy! We just couldn’t stop working together, it was really magical. Now, I look at those photographs and I think, god, you’re six feet and square…! I’m glad that I had that level of courage actually, to be able to do that. The drive that I have to get to something is stronger than any fear of my body, and that’s important to have.

Where does your interest or fascination for bodies that have undergone surgery and have violated, imperfect, wounded skin come from?

I don’t really know. It’s something I’ve had since I was a child. If someone fell over, I wanted to see what had happened. It’s curiosity; I just have a curiosity for that. It’s also an aesthetic interest. I mean, I’m not so interested in a kind of surface beauty, I think there’s a certain humility to getting underneath the surface of something or being prepared to show the reality of something. There’s a humility involved in it that I find in the work that I like. If you look at ancient Greek theatre or Greek tragedy, and you’re harrowed by the emotions on stage and the extreme violence, somehow that gives you a humility in who you are as a human being in the face of gods, or in the face of the universe. You’re so small and nothing. I think that’s the drive, because that’s the kind of art I like across the board – whether it’s in film or music – it’s the art that touches that part of us.

You spoke earlier about the influence that artists from the past have had on your work, such as Velázquez, Rembrandt and Titian. What is your opinion on art from other eras? Particularly with regard to other English painters, such as Stanley Spencer or Lucien Freud. How do you perceive the role of these antecedents?

I’ve naturally always looked at older art. Especially because if you paint the figure when you’re young and you’re trying to learn, you’re going to look at figurative painting. So I learned by looking at Titian, Velázquez, Rembrandt, Leonardo, Michelangelo… I was very lucky as I had an uncle who, from when I was eight, really taught me to look. Also, if you want to have a hero to look at, choose a really great artist, because that’s your measure. You can think that you’re great in the time that you live in, but you only have to look at really great artists and you’re a long way from that level. I’ve held that very dear to me, it’s become the backbone for the way that I work. However much I try, I’m never going to get to that. It’s a long journey to try and reach anything like that. And then I have had an interest that has switched or moved around… I mean, I have a team of players around me who I’m in constant dialogue with – artists like Picasso, Velázquez, Michelangelo, Leonardo, Titian, Tintoretto, Rubens – and then I have other art which is ancient Greek sculpture that I love, fertility goddesses from the ancient world, all of those. After I had children, I wanted to find an art that felt like the rawness of giving birth. I lived in Sicily for a long time, so being in Palermo around those myths and ancient history really linked me to that and the myths of the ancient Greek world… gods and goddesses and the power of fertility. So that seeped into my work a lot then and it’s a big driving force in my work now, especially in the drawings. A kind of creative urge. I’m much more interested in what the life force is of a creative urge, or how to make something and destroy it and bring it back. Through that cycle, which is basically a cycle of nature, you get to a greater truth, or a more interesting area of the work. I only really managed to do that through looking at ancient art.

What types of feelings or significance are produced within you through the act of showing your naked, unprotected self and by exposing your genitalia in such a natural manner?

I’ve just never had that judgment. I get excited about being able to visualize something. I don’t want somebody to tell me, don’t look under that stone… don’t look around that corner… you can’t go around there. Why? What’s around there? It’s like someone telling you during tennis, oh you can’t hit a ball like this. You have to only do it in this way. Why? I think that by looking at lots of different subjects, whether it’s philosophy or reading poetry, you start to be able to unturn those things. At that point, you’re totally free to just do it, because what have you got to lose? You’re going to be dead. There’s nothing to lose. As a female, that’s really important because we are taught from a very young age to be looked at. My job as an artist, as I see it, is to really observe the world and to be able to manifest form that talks about this chaotic world. As a very young girl, you’re taught to be looked at and to get yourself ready to be observed and so that can be quite a contradiction. But if you use it in the right way, it’s also super powerful because you also have the power of fertility. I didn’t really understand the nature of that power until I had children. Because on one side, you’re taught that if you have children then your career is over, you’re not going to be taken so seriously, you’re not 100% dedicated to the art… which is the way I felt about it if I saw other women have children. I would think, they’ve lost it, this is a total dedication. Yet when I had a child, I realized that the power of being able to create flesh, being able to make a body is so forceful that I felt linked to all these incredible goddesses from history that came from the ground and had a relationship with nature. That increased my creativity a hundredfold. I suddenly felt super powerful in my ability to create, or my right to create. Rather than saying that being an artist is a male activity, I felt that it was intrinsically female… the ability to create or to change and transform something. And so it had the opposite effect and I’m very grateful to my children for being born. When you see your baby actually born, it was a sort of shock of recognition – you recognize them because they look like you, or something in them is you and yet it’s a completely new life and you’ve never seen them before. It’s the most profound experience ever. So now, working seems so easy! Making art is nothing compared to the power of that. That’s increased my enjoyment of making art as well, I would say.

You exhibited alongside Egon Schiele at the Kunsthaus Zürich last year. What held the most significance within this dialogue?

The whole experience was an amazing journey. As a teenager, I absolutely loved his drawings… the honesty and the brutality of his drawings, of both himself and the females that he was drawing. My aesthetic interest led me to Egon Schiele at a very young age, so when I was asked to do a show together with his work, it was a dream. It was an incredible dialogue. And then the whole experience of working with the curator and looking through the catalogue and being able to say, this drawing is incredible, can we get that? That was a wonderful experience, to try and set up those dialogues. And then there were the similarities of the works. I had looked at him a lot in my teenage years, then not looked at him so much. Actually the journeys are quite similar in the way that the work is, and in physical difference – my scale being so big and his so small – and realizing that when you see the work together, the power in a small image can be incredible. So that was useful for me to be able to see that actually, that it doesn’t always have to be on an enormous scale. And also to actually show with another artist who is not alive, who is not a contemporary, that was interesting. It sort of collapsed time, there was this folding-in of time that I thought was interesting.

In that exhibition, the Schiele paintings were imbued with a strong eroticism. Is this also an important subject for you, do you think it is implied in your work?

It has become more and more important, I would say. Instead of erotic in a sexual sense, I would say erotic in a life force or drive. That’s really vital to my work, especially in the drawings, because of the way that I work now. It’s almost like a performance when I’m working, so I do sessions of working for four hours for example, where I draw lots of figures and they start to collapse and then I build them back up again. And through that whole physical process, like a game, new forms start to emerge from the nature of the drawing. So it is a sort of game where you get lost, and through it, you’re almost sculpting out a reality from the process of that moment. It’s almost like a dance or something; you create things that you didn’t know were in you. And that’s a thrilling ride, much more so than just trying to document one reality. Let’s say you’re trying to draw just one body, it can be interesting to do that. I think what it does is it shines a light on a type of reality. So for example, over there I have three stomach buttons. I love navels because they’re so evocative of an ancestral tie with your family, or a human tie. It’s like the knot of humanity. When you have one, it’s a tummy button. Then, when you repeat the body and you start to see two or three, suddenly it’s a flock of birds. So within it, you can create a metaphor or a poetry that has many layers. And that’s what’s become so interesting. Instead of one thing that represents what it is, when you multiply you get closer to a greater nature. That’s become very interesting for me and I’ve only really developed that in drawing because I can change so much and have several toes interlocking, or a male body over the top of a female body and that suddenly become a hermaphrodite. But I’m not drawing a hermaphrodite. I’m drawing many bodies together so that the gender becomes fluid. So parts of the male body become the female body, and that becomes really exciting because it almost represents more what we’re like as humans, rather than these separate sexes. We’re made up of masculinity and femininity, so those are the things that become interesting by layering them up.

Does the act of revealing yourself to others provide a sense of release or liberation?

I think when I was younger I felt that a little bit more. There was a sense of Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver when he says, you looking at me? You looking at me? There was that whole fuck you, type thing. If you want to see a woman, I’ll show you. There was an aggression attached to it, which I think is just inevitable when you’re young. But you can’t stay pissed off and angry forever, so the anger subsided and the formalism or the interest in that became more a part of my work. Always in my childhood, there was an artist who was female, but the fact that I was female was of no interest to me, I didn’t even understand that. I worked with my uncle and I was drawing in Venice or in my bedroom or wherever, I was building up this knowledge of work. And then when I got to art school, there was suddenly the realization that if you’re a female as an artist, that’s different. Your access to greatness is not there if you’re female. So that was a shock actually, because I’d never thought about it before. It was an epiphany to see that there haven’t really been that many women. There’s no female Picasso – who is the equivalent? That then gave me a force to say, well, I want to be here. I want to exist as an artist, I feel connected to these other great artists from the past. That’s what I’m trying to do. So using my body became a vehicle to help me do that. Then I think I just realized that it was a good tool to use… I was ruthless in the sense that I would use anything I could get, in order to get to the idea that I wanted. Whether that was liberation or not, I’m not really sure. It wasn’t liberation in a ‘women’s rights’ sense or anything like that, it was actually just having a body that was malleable and that I could use. Even technical things, like I really love the way Michelangelo makes sculptures where the knees come out – they jut out and extend. So I would literally be in front of the mirror trying to get my knee to do the same thing. I would emulate Greek sculpture, that sort of thing and think, OK well my leg can do that. Fortunately enough, I had these very muscular legs, so that gave me the possibility to do it. I learned from looking at my own body how to make that kind of musculature. Whether it was attractive or not was just totally irrelevant. It was just that it got me to the place that I wanted to get to in the art. I didn’t realize that was powerful until much later on. Also, the stronger beauty is not usually so conventional. If you want to get to something that’s beautiful and strong, then usually it’s got a bit of poison in it.

Our body enables us to feel alive and to connect with reality through it. Are you interested in the outside world?

Landscape is hugely interesting to me. Especially the sea… I spend hours looking at the water. Just the way that water moves and changes the shape of rocks as they erode. I look at the way the light moves on the water. I get up early so that I can see the sun come up. But I don’t want to paint landscape paintings. I’ve got lots of images of ruins. I love ruins and buildings that have been blown up, because they talk to us about the way we are as humans. We build cities, then fight with each other and knock them down, they become ruins, and then out of ruins we build again. We don’t seem to learn in this process, we just seem to repeat ourselves in a cycle, in the way that seasons change. I’m interested in all of those things. But I’ve never wanted to paint those directly, like I have with the body. It’s the same as I was talking about before; if you have those three tummy buttons and you repeat them, they become birds. So if you look at my work, it’s really related to landscapes. I have lots of images of mountains and volcanoes. I try to channel all of those things into my work, or allow them to come through just by having them around me. The physical world is vital… I couldn’t work without it. I think we are part of that physical universe, we’re made up of water and the tides and the moon – all of those things are so interrelated. Maybe city living has stopped our relationship with nature in that direct way, or maybe there is a blockage between us and the physical world, in that sense. If you look at a lot of contemporary art now, it’s through a mediation of another medium. Maybe painting talks about photography or film, so we talk about the mediator rather than the physical world. And actually, the older that I get, the more closely related to nature I feel, or the more interested I am in depicting that. My mediation is through the body. All of my work really has been a sort of landscape; it’s the landscape of the body, or the architecture of the body in nature, or the nature of flesh, or the way that light affects a body.

Do you feel that you have a body or that you are a body?

Someone like Michelangelo worked almost with God working through him; he was doing God’s work and there was a kind of divinity involved in it. God has been slipping away for most of us, but when we make work, I’m interested in what the drive is. When I’m working in the middle of the night and I’m trying to get to something, am I working with a wager on God’s existence? I don’t make work for an audience. I don’t make work thinking that I’m going to show this to an audience. But it’s definitely a form of communication. So it’s almost as though there is a third person involved, whether it’s God or whatever. That drives me to go further in the work, and I don’t know what that is. That’s interesting, whether it takes you outside of the body or whether it’s to do with the soul. It’s a complicated situation now, because it’s almost like we don’t have God, so what’s the point in making that work? What is that creative process? Where does that creativity come from? I’m fascinated by the fact that one thing I do works and it feels right, and then I’ll do a bit more and it doesn’t work. Why does that bit work and that bit doesn’t work? What’s the drive to push possibility in the work? To find form for something is a deep drive. If you look at a great painting by Jackson Pollock, it relates to the stars in the universe, or the blood vessels in your hand or in your eye and the way they move around. That micro / macro kind of world is nature and I think painting and drawing can relate to those things very closely. Also because they’re individual works, so they’re not reproduced works. Painting is so related to the body because each painting is so individual. It’s got a history, but it’s a one-off in the same way that a human being is. I think that’s why our relationship has stayed so strong with painting.

What is art to you? What is your definition of art?

I think probably from Duchamp, that art has split somewhat. In a way, Duchamp said that you can’t create anything new: I’ll take this urinal and put it in a gallery… It already exists in the world, I can’t do anything, all I can do is change its context. And so I can’t create something that hasn’t existed before, only God has done that. As an artist, you don’t really have the ability to create and that’s quite an end game, really. And I get a lot of pleasure out of trying to do the other. I think there have been other artists who go down the Francis Bacon route, where there’s an attempt to create something whether it’s through destruction or the possibility of a material, even though it’s a very romantic view of the world. But I get a thrill out of doing that; it’s a human thing. So if you asked me what constitutes being an artist, I would say the ability to have freedom. That’s fundamental. I really believe in imagination and inventiveness. It’s a combination of factors including humility, incredible hard work – it’s going to take a long time to have any kind of mastery in this – plus being brave enough to take a risk. When, in the work, if I’ve made something look really good and I sit back and think that it is looking good, that’s the moment that I try to destroy it, whereas before I’d polish it off. Now I’ll say well, that was easy access, or an easy journey to get there. Where else can you go? If you’re prepared to do it, you can get somewhere far greater. That takes a lot of hours and a lot of risk, but you’ve got nothing to lose. Why not try to invent something? I have learned through Picasso that the really good art lies in the ability of not knowing how to do something. And the journey of trying to articulate something you don’t know how to do is where the art is. If you know the journey that you’re walking, in a way there’s not much point in walking that journey. It’s in the struggle of trying to articulate something that almost seems impossible, but you’ve got a hint in your initiative to do it, or an instinct, and you follow it. That struggle to articulate it is really where you can find something interesting and Picasso is the artist I’ve found who can do that, so he’s really been a guide for me in the last few years.

 

 

1- La exploración que hace de su cuerpo con su arte, ¿Es solo física? 

The exploration of your body that you do with your art is only physical?

 

2- ¿Siente que tiene un cuerpo o que es un cuerpo?

Do you feel that you have a body or that you are a body?

 

3- Sus cuerpos experimentan ansiedad, extrañeza, dolor… ¿Se reconoce en sus multiples representaciones?

 

Your bodies experience anxiety, strangeness, sorrow… Do you recognize yourself in your multiples representations?

 

4- Lo que nos hace sentir vivos y nos conecta con la realidad es nuestro cuerpo, ¿Le interesa el mundo exterior?

 

What make us feel alive and connect with reality is our body, Are you interested in the outside world?

 

5- En sus dibujos se superponen las figuras como en una pluralidad identitaria. Su rostro está presente en la mayoría de sus retratos, ¿Es la identidad un tema importante para usted?

 

The figures in your drawings overlap as a plurality of identities. Your face is present in most of your portraits, Is identity an important subject for you?

 

6- Para usted ¿de qué trata el arte?

 

What is art to you? What is your definition of art?

 

7- La alteridad, la capacidad de ser otro, ¿esta presente en su discurso?

 

Otherness, the capacity to be another, Is that present in your art?

 

8- ¿Qué tipo de sentimiento o significado le produce el mostrarse en su desprotegida desnudez mostrando sus genitales de una manera tan natural?

 

What type of feelings or significance to you does the act of showing your naked and unprotected self, by exposing your genitalia in such a natural manner produce you?

 

9- ¿Es una descarga el revelarse o mostrarse a los demás? Como nos vemos nosotros y como nos ve el otro. Vivimos en una época que nos induce a querer mostrar nuestra mejor imagen y usted desmonta eso también.

 

Does the act of revealing yourself to others provide a sense of release/liberation?

 

10- En Zurich, en el año 2015, una exposición le une al artista expresionista austriaco Egon Schiele (1890-1918) que al igual que usted utiliza el cuerpo humano como centro de su inspiración utilizando espejos y fotografías. ¿Qué fue para usted lo más destacable de este diálogo? El mujeres anoréxicas y usted bulímicas.

 

What was the most significant in this dialogue?

 

11- Los desnudos de Schiele rezuman erotismo. ¿Es éste un tema importante para usted, esta implícito en su obra?

 

Is this an important subject for you, is it implied in your work?

 

12- ¿Cuál es el interés o la fascinación por la carne violentada, imperfecta, herida o sometida a operaciones quirúrgicas? ¿De dónde procede?

 

Where does your interest or fascination for bodies that have undergone surgery and have violated, imperfect, wounded skin come from?

 

13- ¿En qué medida su exploración del cuerpo le ha llevado a esta experiencia de aplastar su cuerpo sometido a ese estres del aplastamiento? Con el fotógrafo Glen Luchford un artista especializado precisamente en moda, ¿Qué mensaje quería enviar?

 

In what ways has the exploration of the body led you to this experience of squashing your body that is submitted to this stress of being squashed? What message did you want to send with the photograph of Glen Luchford, an artist specialised in the field of fashion.

 

14- Hay toda una tradición de lo carnal en la pintura occidental como maestros como Rubens, Rembrandt, Lovis Corinth. Pero particularmente en el arte inglés están esos pintores como Stranley Spencer o Lucian Freud. ¿Cómo mira hacia el arte de otras épocas? ¿Cómo ve esos antecedentes?

 

What is your opinion on art from other eras? How do you perceive this antecedent?

 

15- ¿Solo nos quedaría el cuerpo como reducto para entender o para sentirnos vivos?

 

Do you think we will be left only with the body as a place to understand or to feel alive?

 

1- La exploración que hace de su cuerpo con su arte, ¿Es solo física? 

2- ¿Siente que tiene un cuerpo o que es un cuerpo?

3- Sus cuerpos experimentan ansiedad, extrañeza, dolor… ¿Se reconoce en sus multiples representaciones? 

4- Lo que nos hace sentir vivos y nos conecta con la realidad es nuestro cuerpo, ¿Le interesa el mundo exterior?

5- En sus dibujos se superponen las figuras como en una pluralidad identitaria. Su rostro está presente en la mayoría de sus retratos, ¿Es la identidad un tema importante para usted? 

6- Para usted ¿de qué trata el arte?

7- La alteridad, la capacidad de ser otro, ¿esta presente en su practica artistica?

8- ¿Qué tipo de sentimiento o significado le produce el mostrarse en su desprotegida desnudez mostrando sus genitales de una manera tan natural?

9- ¿Es una descarga el revelarse o mostrarse a los demás? Como nos vemos nosotros y como nos ve el otro. Vivimos en una época que nos induce a querer mostrar nuestra mejor imagen y usted desmonta eso también.

10- En Zurich, en el año 2015, una exposición le une al artista expresionista austriaco Egon Schiele (1890-1918) que al igual que usted utiliza el cuerpo humano como centro de su inspiración utilizando espejos y fotografías. ¿Qué fue para usted lo más destacable de este diálogo? El mujeres anoréxicas y usted bulímicas

11- Los desnudos de Schiele rezuman erotismo. ¿Es éste un tema importante para usted, esta implícito en su obra?

12- ¿Cuál es el interés o la fascinación por la carne violentada, imperfecta, herida o sometida a operaciones quirúrgicas? ¿De donde procede?

13- ¿En que medida su exploracion del cuerpo le ha llevado a esta experiencia de aplastar su cuerpo sometido a ese estres del aplastamiento? Con el fotógrafo Glen Luchford un artista especializado precisamente en moda, ¿Qué mensaje quería enviar?

14- Hay toda una tradición de lo carnal en la pintura occidental como maestros como Rubens, Rembrandt, Lovis Corinth. Pero particularmente en el arte inglés están esos pintores como Stranley Spencer o Lucian Freud. ¿Cómo mira hacia el arte de otras épocas? ¿Cómo ve esos antecedentes?

15- ¿Solo nos quedaría el cuerpo como reducto  para entender o para sentirnos vivos?