Aïda Schweitzer is a Franco-Egyptian performance artist.
Aïda lives and works between Luxembourg and Brussels. Without learning in art school, her confusing work is based on "a no" partitioning, a distance from a formatted model, and challenges the established codes. Committed and feminist, her work plunges us into a poetic interiority of pure lines, a legacy of her travels in Asia. Her drawings haunted by an imagined bestiary whose fine lines are repeated in an almost obsessive gesture revealing freedom of expression that can be found in the composition of her plastic language. Favor the intimate where the association of forms, materials, and symbols intersect. The revisited memory, the invisible, and the visible are intimately linked in an almost mystical approach. In its performance, societal issues on the status of women occupy a central place.
Interviewed by curator Mohamed Benhadj.
Aïda Schweitzer (on the left), Venice Biennale 2017, group performance by Jelili Atiku
Photo courtesy Damian Christinger©
Aïda Schweitzer, How would you define yourself as an artist?
As a woman artist, I position myself in a feminist and committed way. I am of Franco-Egyptian and Chaoui origin, on the one hand, all the French culture and, on the other hand, a link towards my roots, which are very present in my reflections as a visual artist. My creative process relates to the possibilities I explore through different mediums and techniques, like a building site where tools and materials are deposited, where concerns are raised, issues. There are periods where I am inclined to draw, others to work on various materials, and sometimes to non-production periods. I tackle recurring themes, societal and cultural issues, identities, inequalities where my critical mind comes into play. Placing myself in an out-of-frame zone corresponds to me, shaking up the codes, freeing myself from them, going beyond the drawn lines.
References to the clichés conveyed about women, to the pressure exerted on us women, to the fact that we have to respond/correspond to incredible expectations dictated by projecting of the collective male imagination. We must fight these stereotypes, the relationships of domination for future generations of women, those in the making. My body is the fundamental substance of the language of my plasticity. It is important to distance oneself from the world at times, to regenerate and develop one's plastic style, to find one's own way.
What are you trying to communicate with your art?
I feel like a receiver-transmitter in which information arrives en masse, made up of questions, doubts. A period of introspection takes place where I cut myself off from the world; I need to be alone (to complete my project) towards appropriation. It's a strange moment, a whole world of creative impulses in itself. I get up at night, I sleep little, I think, I document myself, and I begin to draw the drafts as the days go by. It's obsessive; it makes me anxious, and then suddenly, I dream about my project. I see it laid out, I wake up, and everything is clear, and I'm finally at peace (laughs). In my eyes, there is no mechanism of creation but rather a notion of perspective. It integrates all these elements, a game between deconstruction and reconstruction in the plasticity of language specific to each artist.
Is the finished work finished? How can we know if all the influence of a reflection is contained in work at the beginning? Is there is a part between the visible and the invisible that provokes the action? A series of circumstances, sometimes even a missed act, can be grafted onto the work, transforming it invisibly, only the artist knows. Afterward, I leave the interpretation to the public, according to its sensitivity, its look, and its requirements. For communication, this is where the role of the curator comes into play to answer these questions. It is a complicated question widely debated in philosophy.
According to your statement, a traumatic experience in childhood may have influenced the artist's relationship to the world. What memories and experiences have shaped your art today?
It is a difficult exercise to talk about my past, I have forgotten some things, and the human mind is fascinating for its ability to heal our wounds to move forward better. Before my adoption as a child, I was locked up in a cellar with a dog; it was my only landmark. I had after-effects in terms of language, nutritional deficiencies because I was undernourished. My adoptive parents enrolled me in ballet classes to strengthen my bones and my body. I practiced it for a few years, hence the influence of my taste for performance. Paradoxically, I developed high strength and intuition. I feel things, people, places, and I find my inspiration in them. We lived in a village in France where people were not ready to welcome an orphan of Arab origin. The aftermath of the Algerian war that touches me profoundly, and I read a lot about its colonial past, which is very present in my work as a visual artist. It is part of the story linked to my Chaoui origins, a puzzle with pieces that I had to put together. Some are still missing; it is up to me to find them where they are.
Photo courtesy Aida Schweitzer©
Photo courtesy Aida Schweitzer©
Since the day I owned my freedom, I have been observing everything around me. I become thirsty to discover what is behind everything, to dive deep in the subject, and to know what lives there. As a child, I often opened objects I wanted to see what was inside, now I set up installations invested with objects, materials, symbols, a coded reading imbued with poetry. I practiced drawing from a very young age. There is a pictorial bestiary very present in my drawings, a parallel world sometimes disturbing, the memory of violence, of rejection through themes of predilection such as mutilated bodies, death, sex also plays an important role in my work. A duality between a colored and dark world, but isn't life composed like that? I am supposed to be dead, a dog and art saved me, so for me, it is essential to continue to marvel, to laugh, to be light in the face of harshness. Humor is a quality that stimulates creativity. It allows you to take distance from the events you are going through.
Do you pay particular attention to a specific aspect of your work?
Photo courtesy Bruno Oliveira©
We are in danger of new forms of censorship! A moralist wave that finds its place and expression in the act of claiming what must or must not be exposed, we must fight for our freedom of creation. In recent years, one only has to look at the number of works that have been withdrawn. If the artists do not oppose this, our field of creation will be more and more restricted, limited. Look at the under-representation of women artists in contemporary art; it is a terrible injustice. We must demand it, denounce it to have our place in the art world where the dominance of the representation of men on display is not questioned. The question of identity is essential, composed of a plurality: a critical posture that tries to deconstruct the representation linked to sexual, social, and identity differences. The plurality of identities in the art world must be integrated. The artists' desire for recognition and affirmation concerning the transformation of the body invites us to reflect on other temporalities of the body: cultural diversity, the multiplicity of artistic identities. Cultural institutions must reformulate and rethink their programming, decolonize the arts, and integrate non-white artists. These questions must be asked and heard in a social and political dimension. Real efforts must be made because there are still too many inequalities.
What for you is the most enjoyable part of performing live in front of an audience?
There are several aspects to consider. The subject: how am I going to show it to the public without distorting its content? The place, the space-time, the visual aspect, the aesthetic choice of the clothes, or my nudity. The presentation to the public: as soon as I perform, I enter the immediate, the present moment, the impulse springs up. My body becomes a tool of transmission. I enter a state of abstraction, emotions jostle. Exposing yourself to the public requires an act of individual courage, stage fright is there, it can be compared to a jump into the void, my heart accelerates in this suspended moment, it pushes me to overcome myself. This in-between moment is a sensory pleasure. The unexpected, uncontrollable part excites me. You never know how the audience will react to this ephemeral, sometimes destabilizing act. This energy that connects me in the interaction that the audience becomes a passive and sometimes active witness. I sow emotions that are sometimes gentle, sometimes violent. It's a stimulating and sometimes surprising whole. The resonance that emanates from it makes me vibrate. One hopes that the audience is sensitive, receptive.
The performance is a trace in the memory, a staging of the body, a marginal discipline because it has no defined codes. This practice must remain controversial, provoke questions. I also think that the performance is not represented enough. Look in galleries, for example. Performance is part of the visual art, we must not forget that.
You have been taking part in a group performance in Arsenale, during the Venice Biennale. How do you connect with other performers? Please tell our readers more about this collective experience.
Initially, it was the artist Jelili Atiku who invited me to join his performance at the Venice Biennale. Jelili is a pioneer of contemporary performance art in Nigeria. I was honored to be part of it. There was an incredible excitement in the dressing rooms during our preparation. There were almost 80 women, we didn't know each other. Imagine! We were a few professional performers. A collective excitement seized the place because performing at the Venice Biennale is impressive and prestigious. The organization was perfect, everyone had their dress, and Jelili is a very generous, calm, and very attentive person. There was an incredible spirit of solidarity. We exchanged make-up, we helped each other to dress, we laughed, to do.
Before going down to the Giardini we all sang while holding hands. It was a powerful act of solidarity. We became a unit altogether. Then we went back to our seats in the Giardini, and there I realized the crowd, the press, the photographers, the public. It was very hot, and our dresses were quite heavy and thick. You could hear the cameras, each one positioned in front of symbolic African objects that were going to form an installation in the Arsenale. During the whole performance, we were silent. There were great moments, when we got into the boats and did a ritual with the water, when Jelili arrived on his horse, our entry into the Arsenal. So many memories... The performance lasted two hours. The video was projected in a loop throughout the Biennale around Jelili's installation. I kept in touch with a performance artist, and Jelili became a close friend whom I saw again last year at the 2019 Venice Biennale.
What obstacles do you face in performing and exhibiting your work?
Artistic work encompasses multiple dimensions that are too long to address in their entirety. The economic side plays an important role: If I have a budget that allows me to invest in the production, to assume the costs, I would think of my project with more extensive possibilities. Without a budget, it's a real headache. How can I produce work while keeping costs as low as possible? So my field is necessarily limited. It's also exhausting. I accept invitations that allow me to show my work, my visibility as an artist depends on it. Without visibility, you don't exist but also no exhibition without a curator, hence the importance of developing a network.
The social organization, which includes the distribution of roles, the speakers, trying to meet their expectations and vice versa, the deadlines to be respected, up to the phase of showing the exhibition to the public. It is intense work, and of course, I don't sleep much, so fatigue is also a factor to be taken into account. For the exhibition of the works, I am accompanied, and we face the unforeseen, we adapt to the urgency often of the assembly. These are some of the constraints I am confronted with. I think this is a question that it would be interesting to answer in a few months, given the current situation where all cultural events are canceled, postponed, and there is a financial shortfall. We do not know where we're going. This current situation is bound to change our future individually and collectively. It is my failures that have built me up because behind every success; there are failures...they are a call to order to question us. You learn a lot from your failures.
How do you document your work and present it in an art exhibition?
The preparatory phase, when I think about the project through a great work of documentation, is the research phase reading a lot. I will document myself in a library if necessary. I order books, an obstacle that becomes an issue is to reduce all my written reflections, all my notes towards the coherent representation of the project to materialize it on the support. I make a lot of sketches, I think, and I try to anticipate the obstacles, it requires an overall view, to project oneself into the finality of the work carried out. The writing phase of the project where I learn to reduce, try to express the essential, how the text will be perceived, for example? What is the guiding thread of the project? How does the project fit into my artistic approach? And many other questions. It's a difficult exercise, I still have gaps, I try to work on them, and I learn. I read, reread, then I correct mistakes. The visuals are integrated. I try to take care of them. I have to be reactive to meet deadlines for printing. For an exhibition catalog, it's a process of exchange and negotiation between the curator and me. I try not to interfere in his editorial work. Mutual trust must be established. Then I give the curator all the necessary tools, hence the importance of his role with artists and cultural institutions.
What other interests do you have outside of art?
Travel, music, reading, writing, animals, museums, and nature.
