S’Éloignant

HUO: Let’s talk about where we are now, in the main space. Your studio is really a large artwork with lots of sculptural elements. I love the idea that so much work exists inside an artist’s studio that it becomes a work of art in its own right. The windows are amazing too.

NB: Here in the studio, I did everything that was possible to do myself, so maybe that is what you mean when you say the space feels as if it has been treated like a sculpture. For example, instead of laying a new floor, I decided to use the existing asphalt. It’s a workplace, after all, but it also preserves the previous history of the building. Moreover, the way I’ve organised the space now allows me to take my time with things, set them aside and look at them for a while, and at the same time I can work on my writings and drawings in a more intimate part of the space.

HUO: And what role do drawings play in your work? Are the drawings directly related to your exhibition practice?

NB: Not at all, they just often ‘happen’ while I’m working on an exhibition. Unlike my photographic works, which usually become an essential element of an exhibition, the drawings are more of a mental extension of myself. They calm me down, or rather they reassure me that not all thoughts and ideas actually have to be implemented.

I call these drawings, which form part of an ongoing practice, Side Leaps. So far, I have only exhibited them once, in 2019, alongside works by Swiss designer and beloved friend Janette Laverrière at Marian Goodman Gallery in New York. You could say that the Side Leaps are an homage to all unrealised projects. It’s the kind of project that interviewers are usually very curious about, and always ask about last.

For me, the Side Leaps are also a critical reminder of all requested proposals. I deeply believe that proposals are a questionable criterion for judging whether a sculpture is ‘successful’ or not.

HUO: The drawings are actually the least known aspect of your work. As Beuys would have said: a Secret Block …

NB: Actually, they help me to keep a critical distance from the production-oriented aspects of my practice. The drawings have no explicit theme and maybe that’s also why they aren’t linked to a single exhibition. They are ghostly ideas strolling and circling around in the periphery.

HUO: I see a spatial model here. (Gestures towards a nearby model in the studio) Is this for an upcoming exhibition?

NB: Yes. Besides the projects I have planned for next year — Scratching the Back for the niches of the Metropolitan Museum and the new outdoor sculpture S’adossant (Pauline) for the sculpture garden at the MOMA, both in New York — I’m also preparing a quite intimate exhibition at De 11 Lijnen in Oudenburg in Belgium that will open in Fall 2023. What you are looking at is the spatial model I made for it.

HUO: The exhibition space in Oudenburg is indeed very intimate — I know the space well. It was built by the great architect Álvaro Siza.

NB: Yes, the simplicity and humbleness of Siza’s realisation and remodelling of this old farmhouse, the intimacy of the spaces and the delicate relationship with the surrounding nature, close to the Belgian coast and not too far from the Groeningemuseum and the Gruuthusemuseum in Bruges with their incredible collection of ‘Flemish Primitives’, is truly unique. It also has inspired other artists before me, such as Niele Toroni or Louise Bourgeois.

I felt inspired by the horizontal view of the landscape with its subtle colour palette and the interior views of these extraordinary Flemish paintings. I tried to memorise them and merge them into each other. It became the inspiration for the new group of works titled S’éloignant that will be included in the exhibition at De 11 Lijnen. During my visits I also had the pleasure to meet Elise Van Middelem. It was exciting to learn about her project SUGi, which develops approaches to build biodiversity, climate resilience and wellbeing within urban communities. The exhibition is dedicated to her and supports her endless engagement, research and expansion within her field.

HUO: It’s about supporting this idea of planting trees. And as Stefano Mancuso, the botanist and professor of the Agriculture, Food, Environment and Forestry department at the University of Florence, says, we need to plant billions of trees.

NB: I find that, these days, nature sometimes flows into art production too fast and seamlessly and is more likely to be misused in the process. Knowing I will not be able to develop ad hoc a serious expertise in the planting and development of urban forests myself, but still feeling the urge to support sustainable projects, I would like to dedicate this exhibition on this particular site to supporting a great project in its careful and long-term commitment.

HUO: And it’s also about producing reality. The exhibition will involve the planting of actual trees, almost like Joseph Beuys’ project 7000 Eichen for documenta 7 in 1982. I see there is also one of your sculptures, Privileged Points, exhibited in the landscape in Oudenburg. How did this series of sculptures come about?

NB: It started when Ann Goldstein invited me in 2011 to contribute to ‘The Temporary Stedelijk Museum’ in Amsterdam. During my site visit there I reflected on exhibition displays in general and about privileged locations to install artworks. I am interested in the potential of negative space, in the enclosure of negative space. A sculpture can denote the space that doesn’t exist, embracing it while remaining a sculpture. And that’s how they came about. As I mentioned before, I was also interested in the idea of institutional displays — the way artworks have historically been exhibited on pedestals. It tempts you to think that if you take away the physical pedestal, the pedestal no longer exists. But is this the case or are we only replacing it with an invisible or hidden plinth?

It’s an investigation, a confrontation with questions such as: What is the function of a display? How do we define the invisible plinth? What is a privileged position in general? and so on.

HUO: At that time, that was still a gesture that took place in an indoor setting.

NB: After that, I carried my investigation around the topic of Privileged Points into the outside realm, into public spaces. I created a permanent installation with the sculptures in front of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and a temporary installation at the Skulptur Projekte Münster in 2017. It is about involving different audiences and placing the works at unprotected sites, sometimes in relation to nature, sometimes in relation to architecture.

HUO: In this respect, they are also places without doors. Some time ago, a taxi driver drove me to the Serpentine early in the morning and because of the early hour, he asked me if I was going to work there. He wanted to tell me the story of his daughter. When he was with her in the park, she ran into the Serpentine’s Architecture Pavilion, which has free admission and no doors, making it open to everyone. She was so thrilled by it that she now wants to become an architect, and her father wanted to thank us. I asked him if they had also seen the exhibition, as it was free entry. He said his parents told him that museums and exhibitions were not for people like them. And in the end, the daughter would never have had that experience if there had been doors. Which is why we also need take art out of the museum, don’t we?

NB: Yes, and instead of talking further about expanding the concept of making art, let us speak about expanding the concept of experiencing art.

HUO: That’s why we want to use sculptures to bring people into the museum. As Lina Bo Bardi said, ‘The insides are on the outside. The outsides are on the inside’. Of course, art also has to be protected.

NB: No doubt, protection and institutional mediation are not only necessary, but essential.

HUO: Your works have a lot to do with context, but they’re not in situ. Can you say more about this?

NB: When I think of the term ‘site specificity’, I can only think of Michael Asher. I have the impression that, after his radical approach, no other artist has succeeded in coming as close to the term as he did with his work. In previous conversations, I have often called my practice ‘site responsive’. For me, this means that both the architecture and the socio-political environment can initiate an interaction or dialogue with the place. At the same time, I believe that every work of art is autonomous — although it still has the opportunity to enter into a dialogue with its surroundings. A work can also begin in a location-specific manner and then turn away from that location in every way possible.

HUO: It can turn around during the process.

NB: Absolutely. It reminds me of my contribution to the project you initiated, Do It, where I quoted Gertrude Stein with the sentence: ‘Every now and then sit with your back on nature’. We absorb things too quickly and too ‘frontally’, we don’t let things coexist or allow them to be experienced from different perspectives. Maybe we should practise stretching the time and the space in which they exist.

HUO: Like in quantum physics, a parallel reality. And as always in these conversations — and in line with your earlier observation — my last question is about unrealised projects. There are lots of unrealised projects in art that we know nothing about. Architects publish their unrealised projects, artists usually do not. Neither do writers or poets. There are projects that are too big to be realised, too expensive, too complex, too time consuming. Friederike Mayröcker told me when she was 96 that she still had a whole other century of literature to write. She didn’t have enough time. And then there are also forgotten projects, drawings and sketches that remain in the drawer. Applications for public art competitions that are not realised. And the impact of censorship — state private, or, as Doris Lessing once explained to me, self-censorship. For example, I always wanted to write a novel, but I never dared. Can you tell me about your unrealised project?

NB: You asked me this before, many years ago. You mentioned censorship in relation to unrealised projects. It made me recall, once again, inevitably, my privileged position of living and working in freedom, without censorship. Thinking of all those who live under suppression, restriction and exclusion, it almost sounds greedy for me to still want to talk about my unrealised projects. I would rather say: I’m grateful for all the projects I’m able to realise right now.

HUO: Wonderful, many thanks.