Put On a Face, Any Face: An Interview of Kenny Scharf and Shai Baitel

Courtesy of Roger Davies

interview by Kim Shveka

It’s not often that an artist and a curator connect the way Kenny Scharf and Shai Baitel do. Emotional, the biggest show of Scharf’s career, didn’t come out of a typical museum timeline or curatorial trend. It came from Baitel’s urgent feeling of injustice that the art world hadn’t given Scharf the recognition he deserved, and he wanted to change that. When we spoke, Scharf joined the Zoom call straight from his studio, answering questions with a paintbrush in hand. It felt intimate and telling: Scharf doesn’t separate art from life. His world is constantly in motion, fueled by color, feeling, and spontaneity.

The dynamics between Scharf and Baitel set the tone for a conversation that highlighted the reverent partnership between them, whose collaborative spirit is at the heart of the exhibition. What initially started as an interview about an art show quickly turned into a rhythmic conversation about friendships, personal stories, timing, and how things can easily fall into place when two people believe in the same thing.

Scharf came up in the late seventies and early eighties in New York, rubbing shoulders with Basquiat and Haring, bringing a psychedelic, cartoon-fueled energy that set him apart. He paints like he’s channeling something from another planet, but also something deeply familiar and simple. Emotional is more than a retrospective—it’s a long-overdue celebration of a singular voice in contemporary art.

Coutesy of Clara Melchiorre

KIM SHVEKA: What are some of your earlier memories of art?

KENNY SCHARF: I didn’t know much about art, just what I got from TV shows, when they had a typical artist in a beret holding a palette with a brush. When I got a little older, my parents took me to the Huntington Library in LA to see “Pinkie” by Thomas Lawrence and “The Blue Boy” by Thomas Gainsborough. It was a whole big deal. Everyone always rushed to see it, like “Oh, you like art? You have to see those two.” I was very excited back then, but to be honest, I didn’t really know what was going on with the art world until I was at my neighbor’s house. They had this book on Dalí—I’ll never forget the feeling I had looking through this book—I was completely blown away. So, that was a very conscious feeling of recognizing art, I think I was about ten.

I was growing up in the suburbs in the sixties, and we didn’t have access to art, but we had those stores called head shops, they would sell skateboards, T-shirts, posters, and smoking paraphernalia. I used to go and look at the psychedelic posters, and they also had [René] Magritte, Dalí, and MC Escher, so I got that also through the head shops.

SHVEKA: This exhibition is built around six core feelings: anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and awe. Shai, why did you decide to organize Kenny’s art in this way?

SHAI BAITEL: I was fascinated by Kenny’s approach to the canvas, the way he incorporated emotions blew me away. Throughout history, artists have tried to incorporate feelings through gestures and form, and Kenny does it in such a simple and effortless way. It was incredibly effective in communication, which immediately threw me into the phenomenon of emojis. I saw Kenny’s work as some kind of prophecy; he was able to not only reduce it to such an incredible way of simplicity, but also fast-forward to the way we communicate now. There are no other artists that have achieved such a level of effective communication. During research, my team and I looked into the science of emotions and found Paul Ekman, a psychologist who studied universal facial expressions across cultures. He identified six core emotions that unify all humans: anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and awe. I realized that Kenny does it in the same way, which blew my mind. Kenny hasn’t gone to the school of anthropology, but he came to the same conclusion. When you observe Kenny’s creatures, it’s like observing humanity, with the same understanding of where those emotions are divided. This revelation became the foundation for the exhibition, and the reason it’s called Emotional.

SHVEKA: Your work first resonated in the 1980s during a time of underground energy and cultural rebellion. But today, it feels like your art resonates for a new generation as well—it’s more relevant than ever. What do you think they see in your work that mirrors or differs from the ’80s?

SCHARF: Thank you. Because I made my name in New York at that time in the 80s, and it was such a celebrated group, people associate me with that period. But I don't feel particularly attached to any time, I feel I’m very much in the moment that I’m living in. I feel that possibly the rest of the world is catching up to me just now. So in that respect, it’s not like it has different messages so much for today as it did then; these are universal things. Art should be able to exist in any time; it shouldn't speak only to one time because you want it to last forever. That was always in my mind.

Coutesy of Clara Melchiorre

SHVEKA: You often mix pop culture with sci-fi surrealism and bright colors. Can you go further into your creative process, and how do you translate your mind into your work?

SCHARF: It’s nothing I think about, it's just kind of natural. I show up every day and start with no plan, just go. My subject matter goes way back to childhood. Growing up in LA, in the early 60s, there was this cultural obsession with the future. After Sputnik launched in ’57, the space race began, and there was this optimistic future idea of rockets and forward motion. It inspired everything—ads, cars, TV. The cars looked like rocket ships. We really believed by 1984 we’d be vacationing on the moon. I loved this idea and I believed it.

But then the ’70s hit, and that whole fantasy just died. We went from this crazy colored plastic sci-fi imagery to avocado green, macrame, and beige. Cars were boxy, architecture dull, and no one seemed to care about that dream anymore. I didn't want the fantasy to end, so I continued this fantasy on my own.

BAITEL: You know, Kenny, my art career began with Sputnik, too. I don’t know if I ever told you. Twenty-five years ago, I was working at the United Nations, and it had tons of artwork that was just terribly curated. When you enter, you had a collage by Chagall, six or seven carpets from Iran next to it, a pagoda from Japan, a stone from Jerusalem, and the Sputnik from Russia. It was chaotic. I mentioned it to my boss, who sent me to the head of facilities. He told me the U.N. had over 5,000 artworks gifted by member nations—but no curator. He handed me the checklist, and I just started organizing exhibitions myself. That was the beginning of my interest in art—so yes, it all started with Sputnik for me too.

SCHARF: (Laughs) Wow, there you go, the Sputnik. Can you guys see me, or am I out of the picture? Because I'm painting at the same time while we talk.

BAITEL: Oh, Kim, you have such an authentic interview.

SHVEKA: Definitely! While you paint, I wanted to ask more specifically about the emoji paintings. Do you see them as a translation of your emotions? Other people’s emotions? Who are the emojis?

Coutesy of Clara Melchiorre

SCHARF: They're everyone. And they're me. There are no rules. I started them in 2018, and I finished them in 2022, so it was right during COVID.

That was obviously a very emotional time for everyone. Well, we’re still having emotional times. It’s a combination of how I feel inside, with what’s going on in the world, and my reaction to that. Sometimes it’s outside, sometimes it’s inside. Sometimes it is someone I just looked at in the street. Sometimes, I’m in a really bad mood and I want to be in a good mood, so I make myself happy. And sometimes it’s the opposite: I’m in a really bad mood and I want to give the anger a way out. There are no rules. As we know, you can have so many emotions at the same time, in the same day, in the same hour, in the same minute. So, they’re all over the place, just like I am, and like emotions are.

BAITEL: I had previously suggested a lot of the things that resulted in the dialogue that Kenny and I had for the past two years or so. It was also about me learning about Kenny and his interaction with the environment, his love for the Earth, nature, and plants. His love for LA, for the ocean, the beaches. All of that goodness and greatness is very pure and very natural. It’s a double meaning in a way. There is some naivety in his artwork, which I love so much.

Kenny’s personality is embedded so greatly in the art, something that you don’t see every day with artists; he’s very honest. He’s very candid in his art making. Every day, when I would call him at about 9 AM in LA, he would always say, “Shai, I’m swimming.”

SCHARF: (Laughs) I just came back from the ocean.

BAITEL: You see? He swims in Venice Beach, and when you walk the promenade, there are a lot of characters, a lot of creatures. He encounters those characters when he walks the promenade, then he goes to the studio and paints them. You might not realize it, but you can see the funky, the playful, the colorful, the vibrant. There is such incredible dynamics between them. So there’s a great wealth of inspiration in the context of Kenny’s everyday.

SHVEKA: Well, I guess it’s a good thing you have a beach near you. Is that the idea behind building a beach in the exhibition space?  

BAITEL: Yes, I wanted to bring the greatness of the beach to the Chinese audience as well, and this is why we created the Kenny Scharf Beach Club on the first floor of the museum. It is probably the first urban beach created in Shanghai. This is exactly the reason for those who do not have a beach to experience, we brought them a utopian beach, à la Kenny Scharf.

SHVEKA: How does the Chinese audience react to it?

SCHARF: It blows me away. I’ve gotten pictures sent to me of all the strollers, kids come with their shovels and their pails and their parents and the grandparents, and they hang out in there. It’s like 100 million degrees outside and humid, but inside is air-conditioned splendor, and you can look at the river. It’s kind of sad (laughs) but it’s kind of sweet. Next time, we have to put an actual swimming pool in there.

BAITEL: It’s a perfect fantasy. Exactly like Kenny said. The sand is not real; it’s pink. You have the water in the background, but it’s of the river. And then, you have all the creatures, which aren’t real either. But all together it gives you a great escapism into the closest thing to a beach club, that could be maybe Venice Beach, in California.

SCHARF: Or Mars. (laughs)

Coutesy of Clara Melchiorre

SHVEKA: (laughs) Well, denial is a river. Shai, since the emojis weren’t connected to any specific emotion from Kenny’s side as he drew them, how did you align each emoji to a certain emotion?

BAITEL: When I visited Kenny in LA, we explored how visual languages have evolved. We went back to ancient Egyptian symbols and Ekman’s research on universal facial expressions and their connection to emotion. Though often seen as stereotypes, these expressions are biologically real. We looked at Kenny’s artworks—not just the tondos—and identified emotional themes. Grouping them was fascinating, and even with some debate between Kenny, my team, and me, we eventually agreed on six core emotions. That process was a discovery in itself.

SCHARF: When I was a kid, I came across a “how to draw a cartoon” book. The rules I learned there are basically what I applied to the tondo paintings, and it worked. I really studied it. But it’s not always exactly defined; there’s no exact science.

SHVEKA: I guess if there were disagreements between you two during the curation, the audience might also say, “But this isn’t angry,” or “This isn’t fear,” which adds a layer of playfulness.

SCHARF: Exactly like life—things aren’t always exactly how you think it is, it just causes you to think about it more.

BAITEL: We wanted to allow the audience to interpret it on their own. It’s not written in stone, but rather a recommendation; it’s just the way we felt about it. Even when we explain it through art history, looking at Caravaggio, Goya, Rembrandt, or any of the masters, it’s about how they incorporated emotions based on specific scenes or events they were depicting.

SHVEKA: You said you see your artistic style as timeless, but I would still love to know: how do you think the ’80s influenced you in becoming who you are today?

SCHARF: I understand why people are so excited to learn about the ’80s. I think the reason is that my generation was the last one before the internet changed everything. Before that, there was a real urgency of place, especially for artists who wanted to participate. Something that doesn’t exist anymore because you can be anywhere now. In the old days, nothing compared to being in the same room with people. That sense of community of artists meeting in the same place—that’s what used to happen in the ’80s. It also goes back to Paris, Berlin, and earlier times in history. Artists would gather and create together.

SHVEKA: Gen Z and millennials are incredibly nostalgic. We always return to that longing for the past, thinking that things were better back then, without the noise of technology.

SCHARF: I was the same way. I was obsessed with the Beatniks of the ’50s, and we could pretend we were part of that world, because it hadn’t changed much. But the change from the 80s to now? It’s insane how different it is. We can never go back, and it’s very hard to pretend to live in that world if you choose to, because then you have to be completely off the grid, and no one really does that. The ’80s were the very last moment of that kind in history.

SHVEKA: Would you go back if you could?

SCHARF: Oh no! Definitely not. I wouldn’t want to relive all that pain. People romanticize the ’80s, but there was a lot of death. What I always say is: the truly romantic period was the late ’70s to 1982. That’s when AIDS began, and overnight, the atmosphere completely changed. People celebrate that brief moment of freedom in the early ’80s. I was lucky—I caught the tail end of it. I moved to New York in 1978. I was still a teenager. ALONE (laughs).

SHVEKA: I wanted to ask about the relationship between you two because it seems like you’re very good friends. How did you merge during the curation process?

SCHARF: Well, I’m always skeptical. It took a while to convince me, but Shai was so enthusiastic, I couldn’t say no, and we started doing it, and it became very exciting.

BAITEL: Kenny was indeed skeptical, but I knew I wanted to do a large show for him. He’s a giant. He’s the last voice from a historic time in contemporary art; his contributions will be studied for generations. In art, there’s often this sophistication that can feel patronizing, skipping over huge parts of society. I always say—and this is also Kenny’s philosophy—art belongs to everybody. There will always be great artists who cater to the elite few. But Kenny reaches millions, I wanted to emphasize that. I also felt there was injustice in the art world. For years, there wasn’t a proper large-scale survey of Kenny’s work in a museum space that matched his impact. In the end, I found a way to convince him. And like Kenny said, we became friends in the process. Honestly, it’s impossible not to fall in love with Kenny. He’s adorable. I love good people. I told him it’s the first out of many. I hope for this show to travel to as many museums as possible because it carries a great message of optimism, of goodness, while at the same time, it educates the audience on this important chapter of art during what I described as the East Village movement. It is the greater chapter of emotions in art. We really have become close friends through the process, and I know this friendship is for the long run.

SCHARF: That’s right, baby!

SHVEKA: Did Kenny let you take the lead, or were you both part of the curation process?

BAITEL: Every item is Kenny’s fingerprint. I can suggest ideas, but in the end, the voice of the artist has to be the center. The curator is a facilitator, a translator to the audience. For instance, the emotions are divided into segments, and each segment has a color. I went to Kenny for him to give me a color for every emotion. He also gave me the soundtrack for every segment.

SHVEKA: Who composed the soundtrack?

SCHARF: Scott Ewolt. He is the composer and editor of the music. He composed specifically for every emotion. He’s a visual artist, but he’s also a DJ. He works on the soundtracks for a lot of the environments I do.

Coutesy of Clara Melchiorre

SHVEKA: As Shai mentioned before, you believe that art is for everyone. It’s also a fundamental ideology of street art. Can you talk more about the decision to collaborate with fashion designer Kim Jones for Dior?

SCHARF: Fashion and my art always came together. When I was a young artist, I was always incorporating my work on t-shirts and objects. Art had no boundaries of where it belonged, and of course, fashion can easily combine without effort. I had my very first show in 1979 at Fiorucci, a store that is no longer here. I was making clothes and selling them at different fashion stores; they were all handmade. To this day, I’m still making one-of-a-kind clothes. I often use silk screen in the canvases, and instead of washing it, I’m like, “let’s throw it on some t-shirts.” I always dreamed of collaborating with the major designers because I not only want to make quality, but quantity is also a great thing. So, having these collaborations is perfectly natural; it’s what I’ve been doing for decades.

SHVEKA: I think it’s safe to say that fashion houses are somewhat obsessed with collaborating with artists.

BAITEL: There’s something curious about fashion houses reaching out to artists in greater numbers this past decade. What was curious about the approach of Kim Jones is that he was trying, similarly to Kenny, to bring the quality of the Parisian couturier in a way that the audience can relate to. Kim understands the power of artists that originated on the street; he has a very sharp eye for identifying what can actually work. Not every brand aligns with the artist in a way that results in collections that are successful, both artistically and commercially.

SCHARF: It was the highest-selling collab between an artist and a luxury brand in history. Kim really studied the art. That’s why it worked. He did it so well that I didn’t change anything they showed me.

SHVEKA: How do you hope people will experience your work? When visitors come to the exhibition, how do you envision them receiving and emotionally engaging with what they see?

SCHARF: I offer many levels to the viewer, but I never want to dictate how the viewer interprets. If the viewer wants to delight in the joy and color and shape and surface, that is great. But if the viewer chooses to see more, I offer that too. It’s all up to the viewer how far they want to go and think about any other concept besides what I offer on the surface.

SHVEKA: Do you feel a certain responsibility for the people influenced by your art?

SCHARF: Lately I’ve been saying, “I'm really sorry.” (laughs)

SHVEKA: Do you have any favorite reactions of people when they see your art?

SCHARF: I just like to see people looking and really studying it and taking their time, because then it lets me know that it’s keeping them for more than a second. Anything anyone’s going to say is going to be nice. I would love to eavesdrop and hear people say bad things. (laughs)

Coutesy of Clara Melchiorre

Emotional is on view through October 8, 2025, at MAM Shanghai, 4777 Binjiang Avenue, Pudong New Area, Shanghai

The Long Journey Home: An Interview of Composer Sbusiso Shozi and Fondation Cartier Artistic Director Isabelle Gaudefroy

Picture © Zivanai Matangi


interview by Oliver Kupper

Before judging someone, walk a mile in their shoes.

It’s an age-old adage. Our shoes carry the weight of our daily lives, our stories, our hardships. They represent the wear and tear of our history but also the tenacity and possibilities of new paths forward. 

For writer, composer, and musical director Sbusiso Shozi, shoes are a way to explore the many pathways of the African diaspora. Blending traditional South African musicality, oral tradition, and contemporary instrumentation, he’s mounting a new performance, African Exodus, for the Centre for the Less Good Idea, in collaboration with Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain. 

Founded in 2016 in Johannesburg, South Africa, the Centre for the Less Good Idea is an incubator for experimental and cross-disciplinary art. The “less good idea” is the one that is more marginal, more daring and more ripe for invention and discovery. It also has to do with resourcefulness; a Sechuana proverb advises that ‘when a good doctor won’t cure you, find the less good doctor.’ The Centre for the Less Good Idea is the first organization to be hosted in residence by the Fondation Cartier, beginning with a week-long takeover of Fondation Cartier’s performance spaces in Paris in May 2024. African Exodus continues that partnership at the Perelman Performance Center in New York City, running from February 27 to March 2.

Autre editor-in-chief Oliver Kupper sat down with Sbusiso Shozi and Fondation Cartier artistic director Isabelle Gaudefroy to discuss performance and the two organizations’ ongoing partnership.

OLIVER KUPPER: How did you discover The Centre for the Less Good Idea, and how did your partnership come to be?

ISABELLE GAUDEFROY: Melanie Alves de Sousa, performing art curator at the Fondation, went to see a performance from some of the Centre for the Less Good Idea’s artists in Berlin. Later, William Kentridge and Bronwyn Lace, the co-founders of The Centre, came to visit our space and we discussed the possibility of hosting the Centre in residence for a week of performances and workshops at the Fondation in Paris.

I have to say that our trip to Johannesburg, on the occasion of Season 10 at the Centre — celebrating years of collaborative, experimental, and interdisciplinary work – was a life-changing experience. It truly convinced us of the importance of showing the creativity, vitality, and talent of this group of artists. Through the residency in Paris, and now this new step in New York City at the Perelman Performing Arts Center, we hope the public will experience The Centre’s creative process firsthand.

KUPPER: Sbusiso, you explore the intersection of music, language, and culture. How do you approach blending traditional African sounds with contemporary influences?

SBUSISO SHOZI: Blending traditional African sounds with contemporary influence requires one’s understanding of the context where the traditional music is performed. African music performance emphasizes the functionality, language tonality, and instrumentation. I compose music in its purest form, and then I get to explore contemporary influences such as vocal four-part harmonies for decoration. However, it depends on the results of such explorations whether it holds and makes sense or not.

KUPPER: What role does storytelling play in your compositions, and how do you translate narratives into sound?

SHOZI: Storytelling in African music is a tradition that has been in practice for many years and is still partly used in rural areas today. This tradition serves as an educational and entertainment tool in Africa. Grandmothers and grandfathers would be surrounded by their grandchildren and perform their storytelling usually accompanied by songs to keep the listeners entertained or by putting an emphasis on the educational element, which is easily absorbed when there is a song reference. 

My compositions are very much influenced by such songs, and it is through these songs where we receive some sort of an archived music kept in its truest form from older generations. I then sample such sound into my own compositions. I sometimes translate my lyrics into any African language and add indigenous instruments for enhancements. This brings richness in the music and connects people of different ethnicities.

KUPPER: You use shoes as a symbol for migration but also as tools, props, and percussive instruments. Can you talk a little bit about the metaphor of shoes?

SHOZI: Shoes symbolize paths, directions, developments, and collapses in African Exodus. Their percussive usage also symbolizes the journey – people walking in different rhythms and paces throughout the years of human existence. They are soul bearers of the wearer, as they have experienced the hardships, wealth, tears, blood, and sweat of the wearer. All human experiences are carried on the shoes. 

When people migrate they are most likely wearing shoes to protect their feet from the journey. However, in African Exodus, we ask for a deeper connectedness – a performer’s and audience’s introspection about one’s personal life experiences. The Transatlantic slave period has been another form of migration. Some Africans in the diaspora have been trying to connect with their bloodline, but the question is, what happens when research and history fail us? We then need to search from within, and this is what the music and usage of shoes in African Exodus aims to evoke.

KUPPER: What do you think makes South African theater unique on the global stage?

SHOZI: South African theatre has evolved tremendously through the years, and it has reached the point where we’re not only writing fictional stories or true life events, we’re creating work that demands emotional involvement and interpretation from both the performers and the audience. Even musical theatre works somehow break away from the usual Western musical patterns and are more deeply invested in following the emotional and physical movements of an actor, giving the sense that a performer becomes a conductor and the music responds. 

South Africa is a multilingual society, therefore we have a wide range of options for selection in terms of culture and languages during the creative process, leading to a more nuanced, layered performance.

KUPPER: As the Artistic Director of the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain that is part of a French institution, how do you see your responsibility now and in the future? How do you contend with the zeitgeist?

GAUDEFROY: Our purpose is to accompany artists in their project and foster new ideas and initiatives, independently from the zeitgeist. We endeavor to work collaboratively with artists, as we believe they can provide us with new perspectives and outlooks on the world. We rely on their visions to transform specific modes of expression into projects which can be shared widely, enhancing what we have in common rather than what divides us. There is no better tool for this than art. 

KUPPER: Sbusiso, from Durban to international platforms, how has your journey influenced your artistic identity?

SHOZI
: I was born in Durban, a city located in the province of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, however, I grew up in rural areas. My father was a prominent member in the community as he was a leader of Amabutho [Regiments/ Warriours], leading them in songs and traditional dance, a position called IGOSA. This upbringing shaped my musical fondness and shaped my taste in more traditional forms of music. My compositions align with tradition, and sometimes I juxtapose them with contemporary influences in order to appeal to international audiences. In African Exodus I went beyond my voice’s comfort zone as its sound transgresses South African borders.

KUPPER: How do you see African music evolving in the next decade, and what role do you want to play in that evolution?

SHOZI: I would like to see the evolution of African music and creativity without hierarchical order, comparisons, superiority and inferiority – music that is understood in its truest form without exotic stereotypes. It’s work like African Exodus that resonates and advocates for better humanity (Ubuntu), work that calls for introspection and healing of the soul. Oral tradition is not enough as some information could be lost through the years. As we live in digital times, I would like to see our works being documented and archived for future reference.

KUPPER: How do you see the relationship between The Centre and the Fondation Cartier continue from here? 

GAUDEFROY: Partnering with the Perelman Performing Arts Center in New York City is a unique opportunity for us to connect with New York’s artists and audiences, all the while supporting independent thought and creative research embodied by The Centre for the Less Good Idea. The North American debut of African Exodus in New York is a continuation of the relationship between the Fondation Cartier and The Centre, following the Centre’s May 2024 residency at the Fondation in Paris.

African Exodus will be performed as the Perelman Performance Center in New York City from February 27 to March 2.

Everything She Touches Turns to Gold: an Interview of Colette Lumiere

interview by Karly Quadros

Fuck art, let’s dance.

It’s the attitude that Colette Lumiere had become known for, immortalized in a mural that she painted on the wall of iconic ’70s downtown New York nightclub and art scene haunt Danceteria. She’s celebrated for her bold personas and expansive multimedia projects from street art to installations to fashion collaborations, yet her later evolutions have received less attention. A new show at Company Gallery, Everything She Touches Turns to Gold, running until March 1, explores the artist’s career in the ’80s as she ventured off to Berlin under the guise of a new persona, the mysterious Mata Hari and the Stolen Potatoes.

Lumiere always had a surprisingly contemporary attitude toward blurring the boundaries between the public and the private, between art and commerce. She began by painting cryptic sigils on the SoHo pavement at night and has shown art everywhere from the MoMA to Fiorucci shop windows to German nunneries to nightclubs. Her longest running piece was a 24/7 installation in her own apartment, stuffed from floor to ceiling with champagne and blush-ruched fabrics, a polymorphous punk rock Versailles. Lumiere took that louche crinkling of fabric from her Living Environment and translated it into harlequin frocks that she wore like a uniform. Her influence reverberates widely from Vivienne Westwood and Madonna’s ragged, spunky takes on period clothing to the elaborately staged personas of Cindy Sherman and Nadia Lee Cohen.

Growing frustrated with the limitations put on a young female artist, in 1978 Lumiere staged her own death in a performance at the Whitney Museum. She emerged a few days later at PS1 Contemporary Art Center, beginning an ongoing dynasty of artistic personas and eras. Everything She Touches Turns to Gold features the artist’s under-celebrated paintings, mostly from the early ’80s, “metaphysical portraits” exploring herself, her friends, and the subconscious. While her ’70s works recall historical reclining nudes including staged photos and durational performances in which she napped in poses modeled after classical paintings such as Manet’s Olympia. Her Berlin period, instead, foregrounded motion. The figures in her portraits wave. They evade. They drift and dream and run away.

I recently met up with Lumiere at Company Gallery to explore the new collection. Now in her  seventies, Lumiere is as true to herself as ever in a ruffled white blouse beneath a hot pink Victorian riding coat. Tunisian-born and French-raised, her accent is caught somewhere between her native French and a dry German lilt. We spoke about Berlin before the wall came down, resisting categorization, and, of course, potatoes.

KARLY QUADROS:  I wanted to focus on the gallery show because it covers this specific period of time: Berlin in the ’80s. Rather than focusing on performances and living spaces, this one is much more concerned with visual art and paintings. A lot of what is written about you concerns a smaller period of time: a lot of your ’70s work, your show at the Whitney where you killed your first persona. But there's still several decades of artwork after that.

COLETTE LUMIERE:  Interesting how people focus on one thing to describe you. They get set.

I really began as a painter. But it wasn't long before I got restless. It was in the air. I was very naïve, and I wasn't coming from Yale or whatever. I was coming from nowhere, actually. It was before street art became popular. There was a bar on Spring Street where I did a lot of my graffiti work. I always had an accomplice, a friend, a girlfriend or somebody helping me out, watching for the police

Simultaneously, I was creating the environments that I lived in. I got intrigued with using space in a different way. This was a time where art changed completely, and unconsciously, I was picking up on that.

I used to go to the nightclubs. It was at Max's Kansas City. No place like it ever again.

The people hanging out there were all famous artists. They were [Colette adopts a macho stance] men, and I was a young girl and I usually had another young girl with me. But one night I met [land artist Robert] Smithson, and we had a long conversation. I said I had learned about him and we were doing the same thing. I think he was rolling his eyes. He had other ideas in mind, but we took him to my place, which was near where he lived and he walked in my environment and then he sobered up. We gave him a cup of coffee, and we talked about art. And from then on, he introduced me to everyone. Richard Serra, Carl Andre. That was my beginning.

QUADROS:  Why did you decide to go to Berlin?

LUMIERE:  Sometimes I just like to give up. Surrender. You always want to plan your life, and then sometimes I find it's best to surrender.

So, I was really at that stage of my life, where my Living Environment had come to an end. I think I was ready to be dismantled. I lived in an artwork that was ongoing. It was very extreme, and I was part of that artwork. And there was another element, which was my landlord, who tried to throw me out from the beginning [laughs]. So it was coming to a climax. And then I get this invitation to go to Berlin. How convenient! 

I don't know why I'm talking about my past again. This is really a problem I've noticed. But this show is Mata Hari. We're talking the ’80s! Berlin was a new beginning. 

QUADROS: Who is Mata Hari the persona?

LUMIERE:  Actually, I didn't know at all about Mata Hari the person when I chose that name. The reason I chose Mata Hari was because I knew she was a spy… You had this image. The Berlin Wall was not that far away.

None of my personas are actually about the name. A lot of people think Olympia, it's Olympia from Manet, Justine, it's de Sade, but none of them are. Of course Mata Hari has something to do with the name, but I had to make something new out of her. So, it became Mata Hari and the Stolen Potatoes. It was the potatoes because it was the food for Germany. Then stolen made it more mysterious, dangerous. That's what I felt Berlin would be like. I would take pictures of myself, running like somebody was going to catch me, like the police or the Gestapo.

I got into [the show’s videos] because it's really old footage. One of them was staged at the opera where I did a music video that was interrupted by the police. I have a tendency to do things I should not do for the sake of art, of course, because I'm obsessed. I had the approval of the director who I had done sets and costumes for at the Berlin Opera.

We were just starting to rehearse. It was a potato song, which is in the show as well. It was called, “Did You Eat?” Well, apparently that was not legal. And everybody came out from the kitchen, from the offices. “What is going on here?” And here I am doing my music video rehearsing. We were just at the beginning, and the police came. And I said, “You're not gonna stop this.” I said to everybody working with the band, “Let's just go. Let's just finish it.” At the end, my wig is like half down. People don't know this when they see the video.

QUADROS: What was the Berlin art community like?

LUMIERE: At the beginning there was a lot of resistance for me, and there usually is. I've noticed this everywhere I go. First of all, I'm a foreigner. And number two, it was the height of the wild painters, the Berlin guys – Lüpertz and Rainer Fetting. It was a whole crew of them. They were very macho, and they ruled the scene. They were very serious, and they drank a lot, and they were very depressed. And here I am, bringing my art to a nightclub. I took a boyfriend's Volkswagen and I painted it and put the potatoes in. I arrived in the Volkswagen, and I did an installation in the nightclub they all went to. It was called, There's a New Girl in Town.

This German art magazine came out with a story that art in the nightclubs is what's happening. In New York, there was Palladium. It was where all the big artists like Schnabel, Clemente, Keith Haring, Basquiat, and Colette [went], but Colette was on her own always. So, it explained how I kind of started that way back before in Danceteria. Then they were respectful. Then I won them over, and they were nice to me.

QUADROS: Can you speak a little about the Silk to Marble series? Many things come up for me: the seductress, a statue of Venus, a nun, decommissioned artwork covered in a sheet, perhaps even a dead body covered in a sheet.

LUMIERE:  Well, you just described it. It's not that I'm against high tech or having a big budget, but usually I don't have either available. So I'm very good at transforming material. It was an evening at home bored and I'm leaving, [so I said] “Let's make some art!” I had this one sheet. It was very organic. Organic is a big word in my work. 

They were first exhibited in Berlin, in the house, Kunstlerhaus Bethanien, which was beautiful because it was a nunnery, so it had these oval religious arches, white walls. It was perfect for the series. And then out of nowhere at the opening, I appeared behind one of the columns way up – the ceilings were unbelievably high – and there was special music composed for that performance.

QUADROS: A lot of your performance work is inspired by art history and the canon, often subverting or playing with classical images. But these “metaphysical portraits” seem to come from somewhere else entirely. What can the world of dreaming offer us?

LUMIERE:  My art was trying to reach the invisible, the unknown. That's what I'm reaching out for… I don't care what the trend is… I don't like trends because trends are things that happen and leave, and I'm interested in the eternal. Artists – I guess they’re called visionaries – they follow that line, and they're mystical in a way. I try to stay away from describing myself as that, but that's what interested me from the beginning: the metaphysics, magic, the mystery of life and art. I'm always seeking for another dimension. That's what my soul is looking for, and whatever way I can manifest it, whether it's canvas or performance, that's my goal.

The feminine influence is a big thing too. Now it's much easier for women, but at the time I was doing it, my work was labeled feminine, like it was an insult. Even the women were insulted by me. Like I was an insult. Because I impressed my femininity in my paintings and the way I dressed. I always have fun anyway. That's another thing. Fun is very important. 

QUADROS: You like to build the whole world.  It can't just stay in the gallery. It has to be in the streets, and in the club, and in the bedroom. 

LUMIERE: In the bedroom, yes!

QUADROS: Were you part of the punks?

LUMIERE: Oh yeah, of course. But I also wasn’t. I was never a part of anything is what I’m trying to tell you. In the clubs it was so cool to be mean! [Colette adopts a snarl and a tough pose.] I like punk, but I don’t like it when it goes in a very negative direction. So I created my own thing, which was a contradiction. I added the Victorian look, the soft look, and mixed it up with the tough look because it was only black, black, black.

QUADROS: It’s interesting because Victorian fashion is very confined and restricted, like a corset. But your clothing is much lighter and more playful.

LUMIERE: Well by 1980, I was getting restless to get rid of my Environment, but I wasn’t really ready. So, I started wearing it. It was an experiment in walking architecture. The whole idea was to use space in a different way.

I work very intuitively and later, I get what I meant, you know? I think intuition has its own intelligence. We live in a culture where intellect is so celebrated, not that that doesn’t have its role. For me, it’s always been about the unity of the mind, body, and the emotions. There’s a cerebral part of my work. There’s an emotional quality. I think this show reflects that. 

QUADROS: Do you think you can explore something with painting that you can’t reach with performance or fashion or music?

LUMIERE: I love it and I don’t love it. I’m a loner, really. I like my private life. But it’s a contradiction because I also like to have large audiences and speak to lots of people. Painters are usually by themselves. With fashion and with music and with all of the other parts, I’d probably do a lot more, but I don’t want to because this is my first love. Being who I am and on my own time, that’s me.

QUADROS: I do think you were forward-thinking being so multidisciplinary. Nowadays, it’s so hard for people to make a living doing just one thing. So you see artists that collaborate with fashion designers or build window displays, all the things you used to do.

LUMIERE: I was always interested in pushing that line between art and commerce. And now it’s merged. And I don’t approve of that. But I pushed it.

QUADROS: Do you feel responsible for the people you’ve influenced?

LUMIERE: No, because in the end it’s not me. But it is interesting.


Everything She Touches Turns to Gold is on view through March 1 @ Company Gallery in New York City at 145 Elizabeth St.