![\"Camille](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/PMarton_009-e1443011614752.jpg\")
Camille Henrot, photography by Marton Perlaki<\/p>\n Camille Henrot, photography by Marton Perlaki<\/p>\n
Whether it\u2019s through combining divergent approaches or by subverting Western notions of authenticity, Camille Henrot\u2019s work has always thrived on disorder. But as she explains, her current exhibition has pushed her to the brink of insanity.
\nEarning a reputation for taking on projects with big ambitions, artist Camille Henrot is best known for her 2013 film \u201cGrosse Fatigue\u201d. This striking snapshot of civilisation won the Silver Lion at the 55th Venice Biennale, captivating the international art world. As a storyteller, Henrot\u2019s fascination for investigating the human condition motivates her poignant reflections.
\nSleek spoke to the French art luminary while she was on residency in Rome to discuss her career\u2019s beginnings, highlights and current trajectory. Offering an insight into the mind of this cultural interpreter, Henrot shared her musings on notions of order and authenticity and revealed the anxieties that underpin her work.<\/p>\n
![\"Camille](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/PMarton_003-e1443011582183.jpg\")
Camille Henrot, photography by Marton Perlaki<\/p>\n
What are you doing in Rome?<\/strong> \nI\u2019m working on a lot of traditional techniques, making a lot of drawings, learning about painting frescoes and dealing with large scale bronzes. The Fondazione Memmo invited me to the city. They have recently established a contemporary art programme where I will be holding an exhibition next year; it\u2019s very beautiful and inspiring. But right now I have to say, it\u2019s mostly play rather than work. Your work encourages slippages between Western and non-Western thought. For example, in your current touring exhibition \u201cThe Pale Fox\u201d, West African Dogon people are juxtaposed with everyday materials from Western society. What is the motivation behind this blending?<\/strong> \nI think the first time I started dealing with this theme was with my work in Egypt called \u201cCynopolis\u201d from 2009. I was interested in the way the origins of art history often start with Egyptian art and how Western culture appropriates moments considered to be important and rejects others. I felt like the whole story of how culture develops is derived from misunderstanding. In this process of appropriation, there is misunderstanding, there is re-interpretation, and this interpretation gives birth to a new movement. But these new movements are often initially perceived negatively.<\/p>\n As in inauthentic? <\/strong> \nExactly, but everything becomes authentic in time. And although we tend to relate the concept of authenticity to the notion of time, it\u2019s also an ethnocentric idea that was created out of a Western construct of art from the 19th century. So with \u201cCynopolis\u201d I was trying to explore the awareness of this phenomenon by adapting the same idea to the way African and Asian culture has been appropriated in Western art and how guilt had become integrated into the aesthetic of works produced during colonialism. You can definitely see this phenomenon in Cubism and Surrealism and the way those movements appropriated African and Polynesian culture while lots of people were being tortured, pillaged and dispossessed. The French Surrealist Michel Leiris’s description in \u201cL\u2019Afrique fant\u00f4me\u201d of how he stole a sacred sculpture is a good example of such ambivalence towards the realities of exploitation. Mythology is an important theme in your work. But what\u2019s its role in contemporary society?<\/strong> \nIt\u2019s true. I\u2019m fascinated by mythology. Mythology is the museum, a way to maintain culture. It is a topic in all the work I am seeing here in Rome too, like the story of Apollo and Daphne. I have this tendency of being drawn to things that are a little bit gross and too much. I have an interest in excess. This is what I like about Baroque culture and the connection that has been made with the digital age. I think this connection is completely accurate. In my opinion, mythology is re-entering humanity\u2019s consciousness through our relationship with the internet. The whole idea of what is true and what is not is being challenged by the accumulation of information. The experience of the internet is the experience of excess and it is also an experience of envy and jealousy. The least lovable and noble tendencies of man can be found online. The online perspective is not a very admirable or controlled image of human desire. You create installations that appear to simulate the enveloping experience and flow of film.<\/strong> \nBefore I became an artist I wanted to be a feature film director like Steven Spielberg. I envy how music and cinema are able to engage the viewer. I like it when I feel completely immersed when experiencing art. Today, however, it is very difficult to concentrate on the experience of looking at art because there is always something there to distract us. I think that we have lost those intense, physical experiences art used to invoke because we are constantly interrupted and distracted. With regard to creating experiences, I have a utopian vision, which is something I tried to achieve with \u201cThe Pale Fox\u201d. There is something ridiculous about attempting to immerse the viewer, and my aim is to create a situation that you will never find in another context. As an artist it is interesting to try to create a space where people\u2019s minds feel more open to ideas. Do you think this anxiety comes out of fear?<\/strong> \nYes, it\u2019s completely connected with fear, with the fear of death and the fear of disappearance. It\u2019s the same fear that brought about the origin of the museum, or the same fear felt by the obsessive-compulsive person who accumulates newspapers. In my forthcoming book \u201cElephant Child\u201d I outline one way of addressing this anxiety, which is by transforming systems into schemas, and by trying to connect everything, as my previous works have done. Before I came up with this idea, I drew a diagram with the ages of man and different moments in the story of the universe highlighted by different colours and branches. This chart then became a map where I distributed the different categories between the four cardinal points of north, south, east and west. What I wanted to do was explore how the symbolic network of the compass points could be combined with the initial diagram I had made in order to create new associations between the ages of man, geometric shapes, parts of the body, stages in the history of the universe and different biological groups. The square is important because it represents an image of totality or exhaustion. This is something that Deleuze described very well in \u201cThe Exhausted\u201d by Giles Deleuze, a text I read after finishing \u201cThe Pale Fox\u201d and its predecessor \u201cGrosse Fatigue\u201d from 2013.<\/p>\n Compared to the rest of your material in \u201cThe Pale Fox\u201d, your sculptures stand alone as very substantial yet quiet pieces. Do they represent some sort of therapy for you?<\/strong> \nIt\u2019s true that they have a very different energy from the rest of my work. When I think about the exhibition, I think that energy came from a sense of anxiety. However, the sculptures came from a more playful and distant part of myself. When I start making a sculpture and stop having fun, I stop making the sculpture and move onto another one. In a way, there is this part of my work that is very disciplined and almost masochistic. The whole process of buying five hundred items on eBay and doing these charts and maps and studying them is a little mad. Just making the list for the exhibition was a headache. It was the same with \u201cGrosse Fatigue\u201d, writing the voice-over was such a long process. Editing the images was a nightmare and my assistant and I became really sick. There was a super-long list of different footage lines because there were more than 25 images running simultaneously. It was really crazy,<\/u> <\/strong>but I guess I\u2019m driven by this idea of going mad by trying to produce the impossible project. What are your upcoming projects?<\/strong> \nI have a show in Berlin that will be the last iteration of \u201cThe Pale Fox\u201d. Because I have installed it four times previously at the Chisenhale Gallery in London, the Kunsthall Charlottenborg in Copenhagen, the B\u00e9tonsalon-Center for Art and Research in Paris and the Westf\u00e4lischer Kunstverein in M\u00fcnster, it is less heavy to install. I am never happy with exhibitions because I always feel things could be done better, or I regret a choice I have made. So having the chance to reinstall a show several times, especially with a show that has more than 100 elements, has given me the opportunity to refine this question of choice. Maybe I am the only one who will notice, but I feel I have finally found the perfect place for each of the objects in the end. Camille Henrot, photography by Marton Perlaki Whether it\u2019s through combining divergent approaches or by subverting Western notions of authenticity, Camille Henrot\u2019s work has always thrived on disorder. But as she explains, her current exhibition has pushed her to the brink of insanity. Earning a reputation for taking on projects with big ambitions, artist Camille Henrot…<\/p>","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":24926,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[11856,139],"tags":[34,3306,1350,1832,1076,3208,3307,141,27,3308,3210,3309],"class_list":["post-24911","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sleek-art","category-art","tag-berlin","tag-betonsalon-center-for-art-and-research","tag-camille-henrot","tag-chisenhale-gallery","tag-copenhagen","tag-konig-gallery","tag-kunsthall-charlottenborg","tag-london","tag-paris","tag-rachael-vance","tag-the-pale-fox","tag-westfalischer-kunstverein"],"acf":{"main_category":null,"legacy":"1","exclude_from_ads":null,"hero_title":null,"subtitle":null,"hero":null,"teasers":null,"facebook_image":null,"related_articles":null,"next_article":null,"sleek_card_focus":null,"content":null},"yoast_head":"\n
\nAs someone who blends an array of critical and aesthetic approaches, do you self-identify as simply an artist?<\/strong> \nI don\u2019t think about artists in terms of the way they work and the kind of fields they touch. For a long time I was very uncomfortable with being labeled an artist, but recently I\u2019ve relaxed about it. This started happening when I began reading more writing by artists. I was recently reading Gauguin\u2019s diary \u2013 the one he wrote when he was very old in the La Maison du Jouir. It was referred to as the house of pleasure but he was all alone with his legs completely damaged and he had no one to care for him. He wasn\u2019t selling anything and was super-grumpy. He was writing about his perception of drawing, the pain he had in his legs, not having money and his wife who had left. I identified with him very much and now I relate myself more to the label of artist when I think about daily life and my relationship to the world.<\/p>\n![\"Camille](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/PMarton_017-e1443011675730.jpg\")
Camille Henrot, photography by Marton Perlaki<\/p>\n![\"PMarton_019\"](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/PMarton_019.jpg\")
Camille Henrot, photography by Marton Perlaki<\/p>\n
\nI guess this comes from a deeper curiosity in finding something familiar in something foreign.<\/strong> \nI think we are only able to perceive the exotic through the familiar. The creation of the exotic is a familiar process. The exotic is the way \u201cotherness\u201d is transformed into something familiar, and so the exotic clich\u00e9 becomes more familiar than the actual reality. In fact, these clich\u00e9s really belong to Western culture, and the real \u201cother\u201d and experience of \u201cotherness\u201d can only be accessed once you have accepted the idea of delusion and disappointment.<\/strong> You know human beings are still like kids, we take pleasure in hearing the stories we have been told before.<\/p>\n![\"Camille](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/Pale-Fox_Westfaelischer-Kunstverein_ThorstenArendt-e1443011996927.jpg\")
Camille Henrot, The Pale Fox, 2014-15, installation view, Westf\u00e4lischer Kunstverein, M\u00fcnster, 2015 photography by Thorsten Arendt. Courtesy of kamel mennour and Johann K\u00f6nig.<\/p>\n
\nYour love for excess and its relation to obsolescence and uselessness is intriguing. In \u201cThe Pale Fox\u201d there\u2019s a sculpture of a cellotape dispenser, which seems to typify the banal and the redundant. Indeed, you often seem to combine elements of high and low culture.<\/strong> \nI spend a lot of time looking at the objects on my desk. Also, when I go to the doctor I am fascinated by what they have in their waiting rooms, on their desks, and the way these things are placed. The objects are supposed to represent power but they are also ridiculous. More often than not, the doctor will have one of those huge tape dispensers, which just look so silly. Every time I see them, I always think:
\n\u201cWhy would you have a tape holder that takes up all this room? Wouldn\u2019t it be more elegant to have a small tape in your drawer? And wouldn\u2019t it be even more elegant to just do everything on your iPad?\u201d One day perhaps things like that won\u2019t exist anymore, who knows. Most of the bronzes in \u201cThe Pale Fox\u201d were conceived out of this process in which we try to introduce rationality to something that is fundamentally irrational.<\/p>\n![\"Camille](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/Pale-Fox_Charlottenborg_AndersSuneBerg-e1443011984516.jpg\")
Camille Henrot, The Pale Fox, 2014, installation view, Chisenhale Gallery, London, photography by Andy Keate. Courtesy of kamel mennour and Johann K\u00f6nig<\/p>\n
\nHow do you order the disparate objects and materials you use in your installations?<\/strong> \nIt comes from a combination of a lot of things. It\u2019s a process that\u2019s related to madness but it\u2019s also about perfection. Nowadays, there seems to be this idea that everything has to make sense, and that if there\u2019s even one aspect of a work that doesn\u2019t make sense, then the entire thing has no meaning. It\u2019s like this anxiety that everything needs a place and if just one part of a work doesn\u2019t have one place then it means order collapses. But this isn\u2019t true, it\u2019s just a superstition.<\/p>\n![\"Camille](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/Pale-Fox_Betonsalon_AurelienMole5-e1443011970466.jpg\")
Camille Henrot, The Pale Fox, 2014, installation view, Chisenhale Gallery, London, photography by Andy Keate. Courtesy of kamel mennour and Johann K\u00f6nig<\/p>\n![\"Camille](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/Pale-Fox_Betonsalon_AurelienMole4-e1443012162178.jpg\")
Camille Henrot, The Pale Fox, 2014, installation view, Chisenhale Gallery, London, photography by Andy Keate. Courtesy of kamel mennour and Johann K\u00f6nig<\/p>\n
\nHow would you describe your aesthetic?<\/strong> \nThe word that comes to mind is messy. You can only work with chaos if you find an order in chaos. When I started working people were telling me, \u201cYou are putting far too much in your exhibition, there are too many things, if you want to be elegant and be appreciated by critics just put one thing here and one thing over there.\u201d I never did that, I always wanted everything to be in the same exhibition and put all my ideas in the same film. My aim was to create something that was extremely dense, which is probably a good way to describe my practice, too.<\/p>\n![\"Camille](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/Pale-Fox_Betonsalon_AurelienMole3-e1443012213935.jpg\")
Camille Henrot, The Pale Fox, 2014, installation view, Chisenhale Gallery, London, photography by Andy Keate. Courtesy of kamel mennour and Johann K\u00f6nig<\/p>\n
\nWhat is the perfect place?<\/strong> \nThere is a place that I consider satisfying for my mind and eye but it\u2019s not an easy place to find.
\nInterview by Rachael Vance<\/strong> \nCamille Henrot, \u201cThe Pale Fox\u201d is show at K\u00f6nig Galerie St Agnes<\/span> until 1 November<\/strong> \n<\/strong> \nBuy the our new issue here<\/a><\/strong> \nMehr: Right Time, Right Place: New Skagen Store Opens in Copenhagen<\/a><\/strong> \nMehr: Eckhaus Latta: There Is No Target Group<\/a><\/strong><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"