Jennifer Piejko – Streaks of tigers and prides of lions never cross paths in the wild, except for the Gir Forest in India, and even then, no naturally mated ligers or tigons have ever been found. The liger exists only in captivity, in arranged pairing. They virtually never reproduce, and have no conservation value for zoos and reserves; they are essentially bred for display only. Is what you make just for your pleasure and gaze alone? What do you want to make, or have you made, as your liger—an extravagant creature, deserted in the world just for you?
Lucile Littot – Within “On a Wagner’s tune”, my latest series of paintings, the wild animal’s figure appears, skinned and promised to tragic endings. At the very worst the feline’s skin will ornate walls as a trophy, wether at the Chateau de Chantilly or in Donald Trump’s home. At best, it’ll sit underneath Brigitte Bardot’s naked body while she murmurs “and my butt cheeks ? do you like my butt cheeks?” while she lays on a white bear skin in Godard’s 1963 classic, Le Mepris. Even better; underneath Endymion’s diaphanous and sleeping body, both divine and bathing in light in Anne-Louis Girodet’s painting (c1791). After all, destiny is destiny. In “It’s my party and you l’ll die if I want you to.”, the last video I made in L.A and was part part of my last solo show in June at New Galerie in Paris, the plot arises in one of my fictional kingdom. I like to use the term “my kingdoms”, after Henri Michaux who navigates Ailleurs’s articifical kingdoms, some of which are built upon children’s pupil and stretching scars visible with the naked eye. I am the queen of this kingdom. Destiny, after all, is destiny. Hidden under the furs and the patent leather costumes of Doctor B, the project’s main character, inspired by The Countess of Bathory, a blood-thirsty aristocratic slaughterer, obsessed with the idea of eternal youth and its terrifying and pathetic advertisements on Doctor Thimothy Kelley’s website from “O.C.” Doctor B, a modern day vampire, doesn’t have to hide until the evening comes anymore to suck up his victims’s blood and souls. Under the “Lalaland” blue sky, promoting the rule of a ghastly and artificial beauty, she satiates her sadistic pulsions during her surgical procedures on these cloned creature. Half little girls, half dolls, their fresh blood serves as a youth elixir to Doctor B’s cult. Her monstrous beauty queens, offered on golden plates and luxurious leopard’s skins, have been turned into guinea pigs and contrary to the wild animal, have nothing authentic to them anymore. The kingdom’s operating suites certainly recall Neuschwanstein’s. A dark romantic castle built by Louis II of
Bavaria inspired by the foolish love he had for Wagner’s music, it then inspired Walt Disney’s castle for its Disneyland amusement park. I envision reality as a superb staging. The sublime as a protective force. The eccentric animal I drag in as I step out of my apartments on “Bd De La Chapelle” would never walk to the bakery without wearing its black patent leather Miu Miu boots with their strass studded heels, as I always carry this adage in mind: “Always dress like it’s the last day of your life”. For instance in De Palma’s 1973 movie “Sister”, Dominic’s lover is wearing a pristine ’80s style suit as he brings along her birthday cake right before she stabs him. Destiny, after all, is destiny. At the moment, I ignore if I am the endangered skinned animal or the frantically blooming yet already staled flowers. But if one day you decide to place me in a zoo or in a circus, make sure you leave the cage’s door ajar so I could assault the tamer and devour him with love.
Electroshock or absinthe? Sound bath or hypnosis?
I’ve been undergoing years of hypnosis sessions which I believe is the only therapy that will work for me. However I had to stop when a late Hollywood celebrity’s spirit layered over mine for a few hours and refused to leave my body. As interesting as this experience was, I don’t think platinum blond is my color. I stand against electroshocks, unless they erupt from passion. One of my closest friend, right after entering Notre Dame church riding his Harley Davidson as an homage to the late woman of his life, was interned in an asylum and underwent dozens of electroshocks. I am saddened by how poetic acts are viewed as madness strokes and how consequently a man is interned and abased for trying to converse with angels.
Who were you in your most recent past life ? And in your next life ? Have you ever portrayed any of these figures in your work ?
The last Parisian psychic I have seen told me that I could have been “ La Princesse de Lamballe” in my last past life!!! I was pretty honored, I have to say! But According to one of Los Angeles’s psychic, I was once a Madam during the 18th century. I held my practice within a dojo and walked my clients all the way up where my ladies were laying on Rococo style beds covered with gold and satin. According to him, it explained the stature within the mise en scene within my paintings and installations. It is true that my characters often look like they came out straight from hell to fly up to heaven.
I’ve always been fascinated with women who prostitute themselves. I’ve met several of them actually. They’re queens. I remember once, when I was a kid and came back from Paris with my mother to go back to the west side suburbs, we would cross the Bois de Boulogne. Unsure what my impressions were by the sight of these half-naked, latex suits wearing women under the gloom of the yellow street lights. Once, a transvestite with an ephebe body and made up like an Egyptian princess, bent over the car’s seat window. It might be one of the first time I felt the very essence of a wild beauty, The kind that makes my heart sink. I perhaps even had desire for the first time. I feel that all these characters I’ve crossed path with and who moved me with an electric sight have become sublimated and transcript with a figurative approach in my work. They exist in me and that’s a way for them to be legendary and maybe the grand dramatic person I am want them to belong to me forever. If I have to be re-incarnated, I would like to be a standard black poodle. Having caviar biscuits and get cuddles from gold wearing hands by the sea-view swimming pool, in Capri. I just love dogs, I can’t help it.
Are you painting or molding to reveal something or someone, or do they reveal themselves to you only when you’re finished? Are they etchings or tea leaves?
I envision my projects like bits of scenario that are also labyrinths: in my work exists this obsession of the mise en scene and the fantastic, I create elements that suggest an epic self-centered fiction by mixing emotions that are mine to cinematographic and literary references. The ceramic pineapple that was dipping in a plate of milk in “J’ai tout vu, j’ai tout su et j’ai tout oublie Song N.2 Felicita” was a nod to Georges Bataille. “On a Wagner’s tune” is mainly inspired by Malaparte’s novel “ The Skin”. My obsession for his baroque style and the excerpt from the chapter “The Wigs”, where the Napoli prostitutes made themselves factice sexes in red satin laced with their peroxided blond hair to please American soldiers, have helped resurfaced this series of painting. The project then moves towards visuals references from the great filmmaker Brian De Palma’s manierist work as well as Gialos Italian movies belonging to Brava or Argento, both evoking the spirit of Lady Bathory; also the plastic’s surgeon who could be an evil character from a cartoon or a B-list fiction. As a sort of Cadavre Exquis, the main and real character, full of sentiments, is masked under different layers of skin. Wether they are mythological characters or historical ones, my heroes, both male and female, become chimeras and hybrid creatures, laying naked under the operation suite’s lights. Etching, closer to a visible yet profound mark, is the comparison which seem the most appropriate to my symbolic. This ceramic’s installation “Vestige d’une cagole aristocrate”, for instance, represent a faience doll playing the violin and whose arms and body are covered in tattoos. It’s both an homage to Boticelli’s Venus, Moustier’s dinnerware which abhorred my great auntie’s southern table in Nice who was addicted to the champagne of “ La rotonde du Negresco”; And The gypsies from The amusement park of my holidays childhood’s village on the French Riviera. I spent every summer without missing out on a night at the Rainbow and the ghost train. The amusement park and its rides give me great vertigo. And when “you’re my heart, you’re my soul” is booming from the garage spray-painted speakers underneath the rainbow neons, the same shivers go through my entire spine.
What is your 2118 fantasy?
Mars attacks baby. And I’ve got the chihuahua already.
Who would you follow around in secret?
It’s not my style to spy on people, but I’d say Dalida, among the blossomed tombs and the enigmatic cats of the Montmatre cemetery or maybe one of the characters in the Tales of Hoffmann (1982). I am always up for new adventures.
You have selective amnesia—what are you going to forget about yourself to set yourself free?
Early on chose for my work an intimate and exhibitionist path. That’s how I conceive art, otherwise I just don’t see the point.
But while I cross-dress my feelings I blur the lines. Then, these emotions don’t belong to me anymore and the catharsis due to my “selective amnesia” offer the viewers a gentle slap of truth. I believe the artists I admire also work that way: Karen Kilimnik, the immuable Mike Kelley or Louise Bourgeois.
In Goethe’s “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” (1787), a young student gets tired of moving water pail by pail late into the night, and nonchalantly learns and casts a spell on a nearby slouching broom to do it for him. The student—Mickey Mouse in 1940’s Fantasia —loses control of the situation quickly, since he doesn’t know magic well enough to stop the broom, and axing it down only multiplies it.
What spirals out of your own hands and gets away from you within your practice, when you’re alone in your studio late at night?
I create works in a similar way they make those magic potions by calling supernatural forces. It’s an attempt to fix what was broken or doesn’t exist yet. I still don’t own a magic stick but it is true I’d love to have the dressing table featured in my installation named “J’ai tout vu, J’ai tout su et j’ai tout oublié Song N.2 Felicità” fly away and sing “Sara perche ti amo”. Or the fragmented tea set getting back together and carrying my breakfast to bed like in Cocteau’s 1946 movie, The Beauty and the beast.
The studio is clearly part of a ritual.
I’m still only a « pretty witch » but it can only takes one surprising turn of events or several years to become a skilled magician. When the magic doesn’t work and the formula fails, one can probably witness me running in circles around the Buttes Chaumont to avoid getting hysterical! When it is working though and the adversity installed by the creation is transforming itself in divine and ecstatic moments, one would, much like the erotomaniac, never want to let go of the endless pursuit of carnal pleasures inside the cosmos.