A converstion with Elsa

Hi Elsa! How are you doing? Could you tell us a bit about yourself and what you do?

Hello! I am well thank you. I am a visual artist, specifically making sculptures and drawings. I live and work in Montreuil, east suburb of Paris. I share my time between my personal projects and commissions from different brands such as Bonpoint or Hermès. I also teach in a few art schools in Paris.

In reading about your work, you describe it as living in this space between dreams and reality, where boundaries dissolve. I'm really curious about that in-between space—why you're drawn to it and what it means to you?

This in-between space is for me the place of raw imagination, where symbolic and reality meet and mix. For me this liminal place is real and tangible and I want to make it visible in my work. I am drawn to it because it's where strange and unique visions happen—it's not binary but filled with contradictions. Dreams we make at night are fed by what we live in the daytime, but dreams always feel like a reality on their own, which I find very special. In my vision, there is not a clear cut between imagination and reality. If you look closely in your day, a lot of things are odd, misplaced and wonderful at the same time. The border between dreams and nightmares is very thin, same as good and bad taste—it's very easy to fall from one to the other. I am not so interested in making something beautiful, but more in making something strange, like an honest projection of what I have in mind.

Your characters are hybrid, grotesque—somewhere between beast and human. What do you want them to do or feel like for people who see them?

I don't know honestly what it would do on people when I make them. While I work, I cannot think about the potential viewer, otherwise it blocks what I want to say and create. I can only observe what people tell me when they see the final piece. Some people are scared by them, others drawn to it, but it's never lukewarm for sure.

Those hybrid characters are also an in-between space. They represent what words cannot describe—like a slippery dream that would fall into a nightmare and back into a dream. When I make a character, in drawing or sculpture, I am also very interested in the projection we make as humans on animals—between repulsion and attraction. They are so close to us and yet remain completely mysterious. Popular tales have tailored our visions and imaginations about animals like wolves, bats, toads. We all inherited these symbolic visions that are now shaping our imaginations.

Related to that, you mention in your manifesto this idea of bringing out the strange within us. How does that work through your characters? What are you trying to make visible with them?

Through my characters, I am trying to translate this impermanence of our beings—how multiple we are and how we contain in ourselves animals, nature, fear, tales, mythology, tragedy, pure joy and so on. We are constantly in transformation, having paradoxical thoughts all day long. Seeing beauty and strangeness, sadness and joy, fear and laughter together all the time. So for me, everything is everywhere all at once, and that's why I want to translate this feeling I have—and I think many of us have too—and that I find quite hard to translate in any way other than images. We are not totally human, not totally animal, and we have to compose our beings with this intense cocktail of symbolism, imagination and reality. This feeling is hard to translate through words, but when I make characters, I can encapsulate those paradoxes and almost bring them in motion.

You work with papier-mâché, which you call a humble material. What does that humbleness give you that other materials don't?

Papier-mâché is cheap, fast and doesn't need any specific tools or technical supplies. It's a very freeing and experimental material. You can make, destroy and rebuild as much as you like, which takes the pressure off your creations. The preciousness comes from the time and the craft you put into the sculptures. I love it because it's referring to outsider art, children's activities, carnival, popular and folkloric art—which I find so beautiful, free and touching. I find the democratic aspect of it very likable and pure. I also love that it looks so imperfect. It makes the sculptures tender and close to the viewer. Because of its imperfection, it calls the humanity in us—as we are very imperfect beings.

I find this material very expressive and it gives a lot of creative independence. But papier-mâché has the defects of its qualities. It's quite fragile, doesn't last so much in time, and when you work with it you feel very equal to the material. Papier-mâché doesn't challenge you as much as ceramic does, and you stay very much in control of every aspect of it—which you don't when you work with clay and glazes. With ceramic, it's more of a battle between you and the technique and you have to let it go a lot while maintaining a high requirement.

Color seems really important in your work too. You've said it's not ornamentation but material itself. What do you think about color? What does it do to a piece?

For me color is the purest and simplest form of expression. Just with one or a combination of it, you can get very strong feelings and sensations. When I work with colors, I have an intense feeling of hunger or thirst. I truly desire colors. My use of it is almost beyond control and I need to see it appear—not like it's filling blank space, but in complete fusion with the shapes I imagine. When I draw, it's even more direct, as the ink is literally taking its own space on the paper and flowing outside of me. It feels to me that the color is alive and organically will take its own place on the drawing. Then it's my responsibility to reply to it and dance together with the color. A color for me has its own life and I love to apply it accidentally in order to keep surprises. I like when color doesn't behave well, when it flows and mixes together in weird tones, when it has texture, brightness and depth. Color really has a dimension on its own.

Although, I have also worked with solid colors on my last ceramic pieces and I love it. It makes the shape more present and powerful. I will explore more using a single color in my next sculptures.

I noticed your drawings and sculptures feel like they're talking to each other—you said they function like "communicating vessels." Can you walk us through how that works? How does a drawing become a sculpture, or vice versa?

I always think in volume and drawing at the same time. But the production will depend on my energy when I think of a piece to make. Sometimes my idea will come as a drawing because it feels more like a unique, symbolic image where I can make a lot of small details. When I'm more thinking in motion and movement, I go naturally towards sculpture. A volume makes a character alive—they exist in three dimensions, you can touch them, feel them. A drawing feels more like a statement as it's two-dimensional and you can't go around it. When I draw, it also feels like I am using other skills and senses. I have to transform a 3D into 2D and it's asking a lot of concentration and brain gymnastics for the shape to be right. When I make a sculpture, it's a bit more natural as we are and live in a three-dimensional world. If I am trying to make a leg, I can feel the leg with my hand and I know how to make it. In a drawing I would have to translate the shape back into two dimensions.

That being said, I work on the same obsessions, the same universe that I want to see alive in front of my eyes. And very often, a drawing, after being made, will become a sculpture and vice versa. It's just a matter of time till one becomes the other and that I can capture all dimensions of the creation I want to make.

You were really influenced by Tex Avery cartoons and early Wallace & Gromit as a child. What was it about those that made you want to create your own characters?

As a child, I watched a lot of Tex Avery—it was on TV and my parents would record it. I always felt like this cartoon was subversive for children in a sense that it mostly talks about death, distortion and destruction while being very colorful, goofy and fun. I think this combination made a very big impact on my psyche and my imagination. I realized how life and death were intricate in an absurd, tragic and joyful way. I loved to watch it over and over again as the characters live and die and live again all the time. I think it was very cathartic and I loved the drawings, the movement and the distortion of it.

The first time I visited the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris, where they display art and craftsmanship from all over the world, it jumped to my eyes that all these figures and sculptures looked like cartoons. They refer a lot to spiritual and magical practices so they have exaggerated features and they also play cathartic roles in societies. This coalition between Tex Avery and popular art made me realize what I wanted to express myself—which was an exorcism of my fears through expressive, burlesque and colorful characters. Carnivals also contain the same type of expression through costumes and the reversal of values.

When I first saw Wallace & Gromit in the cinema, I had a shock. It was the first ones (A Grand Day Out, The Wrong Trousers...), and I couldn't believe that the inanimate could become animated. I found the clay so beautiful and touching as you could see the hand prints on the characters. I was fascinated by all the different materials they used to make fire or cheese, the miniature sets and the story was very sweet and clever. For a long time I wanted to make stop-motion animation and I would still love to participate in one, although I know it's quite repetitive and time-consuming. In the end, I still have the same intention, which is to make characters exist, give them movement and expression so that they feel alive.

There's this quote in your manifesto from Gramsci: "The old world is dying, the new world is slow to appear and in this chiaroscuro the monsters arise." How does that feeling live in your work right now?

In my work, I want to make the invisible visible in order to face my fears and make them a part of my world. What is hidden is scary, but once you put your fears in bright daylight, they seem less threatening. I also think that once it's exposed, it can be beautiful and monsters and creatures can be part of our lives instead of being hidden. That's also why the work of Goya, Jérôme Bosch and Louise Bourgeois makes so much sense to me. Those monsters are part of us—they inhabit us, in a way. All popular tales have a big part of darkness; it makes them more complex and reflects our humanity in a deeper way.

It also really depends for me how you approach it. I don't find the sculptures of Louise Bourgeois scary—they have so many different and paradoxical aspects that live together. When we ignore or hide what scares us, we ignore a big part of us that can also be beautiful, instructive and even fun.

When I look at your work, I get the feeling that there's a whole world happening inside you—like you have this absurd, surreal fantasy life and you're translating it into these characters. Is that close? What does that inner world look like?

You saw right through me! I indeed have exactly the world I create in my psyche. Like a lot of people, I am very porous to our world and my sensitivity is very acute, which makes me extremely anxious and full of dark imagination for better or worse. The positive part of it is that it translates in my mind as a world of characters and fantasy that I can express through art. When I draw or sculpt, I also create a distance with my fears and I can fill this in-between with humor and beauty in the best case!

Things are coming in my mind as strong images and I feel the urge to make them exist so that they act like a spell. Once it's captured on paper or clay, it's mine and it can communicate with the outside world and hopefully resonate with other people.

What's calling you next? What do you still want to explore?

I made a mural in a bedroom of my last residency "Les Ateliers dans la forêt" and I am working on making more frescoes like that this year (I am open to commissions!). I am also working on a book about motherhood and how it transforms us into an unknown creature. There is also an exhibition about childhood at Artipelag, a museum in Sweden, curated by Lidewij Edelkoort and Philip Fimmano starting in October. I will present big animal masks in papier-mâché.

This year, I am again part of the Art Month, a program where 120 women artists are presenting an exclusive portfolio of work in April where collectors can pay for a piece of art in twelve installments, which facilitates the acquisition.

This year I will buy my own kiln and I am very much looking forward to producing new pieces and developing the objects part of my work even more!

 

Photos by: Céline Saby