10 Questions with Erika Thomas
Erika Thomas, born in Brazil in 1964, spent a considerable amount of time between France and Brazil. Having attended the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Rio de Janeiro, she eventually settled in France during the 80s. Erika has always harbored a thirst for knowledge, pursuing studies in art and psychology concurrently in France. As a student, she authored a novel titled "The Wounded Bird," delving into the era of the Brazilian dictatorship, alongside composing short stories and poems.
Qualifying as a psychologist, Erika Thomas dedicated over a decade to this profession. However, a pivotal moment led her back to the realm of visual arts. Enrolling at the Sorbonne, she earned a Master's degree and later a doctorate. During this period, Erika Thomas created poster-poems displayed in the streets of Paris and Lille. With the attainment of her Habilitation à Diriger des Recherches, her creative focus shifted toward documentary and poetic language, aspiring to capture the world's beauty and the fleeting essence of moments. Art, she believes, allows one to live intensely.
Erika Thomas's documentaries, crafted in the intimate style reminiscent of Alain Cavalier, Ross McElwee, and Chantal Akerman, have been showcased at various festivals in France and internationally. Her diverse artistic works, including posters, paintings, videos, photographs, and photo-poem books, have been featured in group exhibitions, artistic gatherings, and university colloquia. Whether documentary or poetic, her creations are consistently accompanied by academic writing. As a teacher, she imparts unique methodologies to her students, emphasizing that the artist, as a researcher, possesses a distinct approach unlike any other.
Erika Thomas - Portrait
ARTIST STATEMENT
As an artist, Erika Thomas sees artistic creation as a profound connection to oneself, others, and the world. In her perspective, the artwork embodies the artist's metaphorical expression, containing a "Knowledge that ignores itself," akin to psychoanalytic concepts. The artist's word is never transparent; much like the language of love, it requires interpretation. Drawing inspiration from Antonin Artaud, the French poet and theorist, Erika Thomas echoes the sentiment that creation serves as a means to escape personal struggles, quoting Artaud's notion that "one creates only to get out of hell."
For Erika Thomas, the act of creating has been a lifelong endeavor, a way to confront the battles of life and defy the inevitability of death. Through creation, the artist symbolically avoids self-destruction and experiences a temporary sense of repair. Creating serves as a defense against anguish and vertigo, providing a means to ward off torment. However, the moments of repair and appeasement found in the creative act are fleeting, prompting the artist to continuously engage in creation across all aspects of life. In her perspective, everything becomes a work, and every facet of existence becomes a source of creation.
In her current presentation, she incorporates dance, exploring the body's relationship to space, poems that delve into language and its connection to meaning, and video, a crucial contemporary medium interwoven with music. Together, these elements converge to introduce the concept of "shift." This notion holds significance for Erika Thomas in artistic arrangements, as identifying gaps or flaws often leads to a deeper understanding of a work's discourse.
Rest your Soul, video, 4’ 39’’, 2023 © Erika Thomas
INTERVIEW
Let's start from the basics. Who are you? And how did you become the artist you are today?
In reality, it's difficult to present ourselves because we're made up of so many different facets; we're so complex that, sometimes, without realizing it, we highlight one thing to mask another or simplify the vision we have of ourselves. So let's say I'm a woman artist for whom creation is what gives meaning to my journey in this world. I'm Franco-Brazilian, but I have other roots that are very important to me, such as African and Jewish. This mix makes me what I am: a person who likes to dance on borders and dream while admiring the immensity of the sky that knows no borders. I don't feel I've "become" an artist. For as long as I can remember, I've seen myself as someone who created. I remember the cardboard jewelry and paper dolls I made as a child, love poems and collages as a teenager, and posters and paintings. So many things that now seem to retrace the path of my life! Basically, all these very different things say the same thing: that to create is to make something of what torments us.
When did you first realize you wanted to be an artist?
I deeply believe that you don't decide to be an artist. From a psychological point of view, I'd say it's a defense mechanism like any other. Whereas some people repress or deny something that hurts them, the artist, through this mechanism that he has not chosen, gives form to what has hurt him. From this perspective, we could say that his work tells the story of his pain. From my point of view, nothing is created without pain. This pain may be archaic or recent, or it may be an old pain reactualized by a more immediate pain, but creation seems to me to have a strong link with pain. It sometimes transcends it. In any case, it is indispensable for the artist.
And when did you start experimenting with video art and cinema? What inspired you to follow this route?
My first art videos date back to the late 80s. At the time, I was presenting my artistic work at the home of a Brazilian friend who had an apartment in Paris and organized very interesting art dinners. Paula Moreau, rest her soul. A lot of artists got together there. Her apartment was a kind of magnificent gallery! A few years later, I began my doctoral thesis in Cinema, and then Les Ateliers Varan in Paris (a documentary course). All this made me decide to pursue film creation as an archive of memory, because between the 80s and today, I've measured time and all it brings and takes away.
Let's talk about your work. You primarily focus on video art and poems. How do you mix and blend these different mediums?
My current research focuses on poetry and the visual arts. Video is one of these visual arts, and I also work with photography. As you know, photography sometimes accompanied the poetry of the Surrealists (Eluard, Breton), but this was essentially for illustrative purposes. This is not the case with my work. And I'd say the same about video. Both video and photography have had to wait for the same cultural legitimacy as poetry. Mixing them is a way of creating interdependencies. Creation is a matter of chance: for May Peace Be With You, the starting point was a theater play I wanted to see but wasn't able to. According to the play's summary, a woman was mourning the death of her love. To console myself for having missed the play, I imagined May Peace Be With You. First, I wrote the text, then I chose the music, and finally, the dance.
What are the main themes you pursue with your art?
I notice that my themes are essentially those of disappearance, death, and love. There's often a slightly melancholy undertone, even though I'm a happy person by nature. And, from these themes, I can enlighten you on the function of this creation.
In one of his short stories, Stephan Zweig has a beautiful reflection on creation. It's in " Mendel, the Bibliophile," where he says - when the bookseller is dead - something like: "I should have known that one writes to stay in touch with people beyond death."
And how do you develop them into the finished product? In other words, how do you go from the first idea to the final outcome?
The first idea is, above all, a first feeling, an emotion that grips me and to which it becomes increasingly urgent to give form. The finished product must bear witness to what has been experienced. To go from one to the other, I'm like a detective investigating my emotions, the tools at my disposal, and the methods to use. It's important for me to work autonomously, thinking through all the stages and editing my videos myself.
Your videos have a recurring pattern, with a fixed camera and you performing in front of it. Is it a stylistic choice on your part? And how did you develop this style?
Yes, it's an aesthetic bias. You have to think of the camera frame as a painting or a window. You also have to think of the camera - as an object - as an extension of the videographer's body. I am both the person who defines this "window open onto a world" (to use Alberti's words in his treatise on painting) and also the character who moves within this world, and through this motionless camera, I give myself a precise place in this world. This dancing figure calls out to the viewer through his or her gaze, and in so doing, the out-of-frame is also emphasized. All these elements (a motionless frame set in the world, a woman dancing, her voice-over telling a story while the text scrolls across the screen) tell parallels (words heard, words read) and oppositions (moving body, fixed camera) that define the rules of my poetic and visual creation.
Is there anything else you would like to experiment with? Any medium or theme you would like to introduce into your work?
Currently, I am working on a family documentary. It is in the intimate vein, like many other of my documentaries. For him, this artistic work around poetry will have a special place.
You have a long career, and you are also currently a professor of art and cinema at Lille University in France. What advice would you give to an emerging artist?
From a personal point of view, the first advice I give to this young generation, whose commitments I greatly appreciate, is to make Time for your friends. Time has a lot to teach us and offer us. From a more artistic point of view, the advice that seems important to me is to move forward with real faith in your work. Against all odds, you have to believe in your work and assert yourself as an artist. Explaining, analyzing, and arguing our work frees us from leaving only others the possibility of granting value to our work.
And finally, what are you working on now? Do you have any new projects you would like to share with our readers?
Yes, I have an important project beyond my new documentary. A more political project around migration issues and the state of the world. I can't say more yet. I need to investigate further.
Artist’s Talk
Al-Tiba9 Interviews is a promotional platform for artists to articulate their vision and engage them with our diverse readership through a published art dialogue. The artists are interviewed by Mohamed Benhadj, the founder & curator of Al-Tiba9, to highlight their artistic careers and introduce them to the international contemporary art scene across our vast network of museums, galleries, art professionals, art dealers, collectors, and art lovers across the globe.
