The Body As Emotional Amplifier

C&AL: How would you describe the main lines in your work? I am thinking mainly of your drawing and painting practice, the materiology you display in your samples…

YS: I don’t necessarily look for coherence in my work, I prefer to trust my instincts, which gives me great freedom to use new materials or techniques. Intimacy is often a starting point from which I try to extract a context and a more general inquiry. There is no authoritarian classification; to me, every gesture has equal importance: a sketch can become a work of art, while a more elaborated ceramic piece can function as a door block. My work claims a certain spontaneity, the works become accessories but often they also become matter. I recycle the pieces I make, usually by transforming them or giving them a second life.

C&AL: What place does performance and the concept of the stage occupy in your artistic activity, and how important is the notion of collaboration to you?

YS: From my point of view, performance allows us to reinforce the idea of desecration of the work. Ultimately, I am primarily interested in the idea of discussion and sharing. At first I had considered performance as the possibility of being as sincere and transparent as possible. Also, my body was the tool I was most familiar with, and it allowed me to show my creative process in a simpler way. I also consider the different collaborations that I have been able to engage in, as performances in which, in the end, the process of joint creation becomes almost as important as the result. Collaboration is something natural to me, it is a way to discover new territories or to experiment with new ways of doing things that I would not venture into by myself. Working in the world of contemporary dance both as a performer and as a consultant is not a different practice from my production as an artist. They are an integral part of it. The stage is a space that particularly affects me, since its temporality is defined by the body and because it can also become a temporary exhibition space.

C&AL: As an artist, how do you relate to your Martinican roots? When we talk about your work, we often refer to the creoles or the archipelago. How do you consider this reading and this relationship with the idea of mestizaje and its Martinican origins?

YS: From very early on I became aware that my identity could be flexible. What I am, where I come from and how people perceive me does not always match nor can it be seen through the same lense. Martinique has always been an answer to insistent questions about my origins, but I have never really lived in Martinique. For me, that place became something very intimate, a mythology created from family tales, an imaginary town of stories, smells and tastes. Martinique is fundamentally the image of my grandfather, who was a boxing champion in France and Europe in the 1960s. I realize that I inherited numerous and very diverse objects without knowing their origin and, in some way, it was from that collection of objects that I put together my own roots. I often merge them with installations, to invoke ancestors and to place them back in the centre of the action. There is always the idea of sharing my intimacy and occupying a space as if I were at home. Instead of hanging family pictures on the wall, I put those tacky objects there. In this way, by making them coexist with other objects, a kind of créole universe emerges.

C&AL: This fall you exhibited together with your choreographer friend Dana Michel at the Centre d’art de Brétigny in France and your are now in residence at Triangle in Marseille. What projects do you have for the future?

The exhibition with Dana Michel allowed me to clarify certain aspirations, notably that of creating a territory that can be defined between the exhibition, the theatre scene or stand up: what I like is producing and creating spontaneous performances. Besides a collaboration for Manifesta in Marseille this summer, and a participation in Dust Specks on the Sea, Contemporary Sculptures From the French Caribbean and Haïti, which was presented in 2018 and 2019 in different spaces in the United States, I have different projects planned with the gallery 14 N 61 W, in Martinique, which has been supporting my work for a couple of years.

Frédréric Emprou conducted the interview. He is an independent art critic and curator. He lives in Nantes and Paris, France.

Translation from Spanish by Zarifa Mohamad Petersen