-So collage is a bit of a “black sheep” in the art world?
-I think so and I have no problem saying so. And I’m not belittling it, quite the opposite: I lift it up and celebrate it. But it’s a reality that it’s a genre that is hard to establish or involve in the market, more than painting; painting is more popular, it’s collected, it has more value. They are realities. There’s a term that’s used a lot here, “Underdog,” which is like… something down low, in the shadow of. And for me, that’s where the best comes from. My life is “underdog.” I function like that when I watch movies, when I read, in things that attract me: this thing of belonging to a different view, a minority. And I love that collage is like that. And on the other hand, collage is an art that everyone likes. People see a work and say “oh, how nice collage is,” but historically its history is not known or it is not collected as it happens with painting or sculpture.
-I could say Hannah Höch, Grete Stern, Sarah Halpern, Carmen Winant and Justine Kurland. But my references come more from other places, from currents of thought, from cinema. Many of the images I use come from books and catalogues of celebrities from the golden age of Hollywood. I am interested in seeing how the archetype of beauty and female role is described and imposed; all these great talents, such as Greta Garbo, who have been so powerful, always with those roles of passionate and at the same time submissive women. I combine these images from the 20th century with classical statues, generally Greco-Roman, which for me are another version of popular culture. In the same way they are also references of beauty, of how women should look and behave, what we should adore and aspire to be. At one point it is popular culture, there is a dialogue between those two types of images.
