Cycle in Heels : Visionaries

I met Sue Kreitzman at her exhibition Dare to Wear in november, an amazing event, where you don't know if the piece of art are the actual works exhibited or the people watching and performing around. I immediately fall in love with Sue's universe, and she asked me to made a necklace for her, which as an honour. I wanted to make something especially for Sue the way i see her and the way she inspiring and influence me in my own work.

"My work is completely untutored (as far as technique and materials are concerned, I make it up as I go along), intensely personal and involves colour, food, freedom and the female landscape. I fashion imagined Goddesses, glimpsed strangers, close friends, my personal female heroines, real and mythological - Josephine Baker, Frida Kahlo, Eve, Medusa - and self-portraits, and I adorn these powerful female images with profound symbols crafted from junk." I am deeply moved by primitive religious and tribal art of all kinds. Images and objects that have been created with passion take on immense power."

http://www.suekreitzman.com/

So I tried to reflect her love for baroque and profusion of elements. You can find a lot of references to surrealism, especially to Dali, for the lobster and for the flower head lady. Also lot of syncretism references, with a oriental Godess next to a Jesus medal.

For the basis I cut the shape in wood with a jigsaw, then i spray-painted it in carmine (Sue's colour!). To protect the table of my kitchen I used some fashion magazines and i like the red splashes on the Chanel ad, as if this necklace was a kind of slaughter in the fashion world!

It's interesting to talk with people about your work because you have your own references like Dali for the lobster but someone is going to tell you - oh i though you where inspired by John Waters 's Multiplied Maniac movie where the drag queen Devine is attacked by a giant lobster!

It was quite a slow creative process, the necklace took me two month to be made. I didn't have a preexisting design, for the necklace. Everything come from necessity, I started from what i had and what i found. Like Sue "Half my time is spent obsessively trawling for junk, and the other half, obsessively putting it all together." I feel like an hermit crab who doesn't build his shell from scratch but take over abandoned one and make it his own by adapting it.

The base of the necklace was on my mannequin in my room and i was adding or taking something back every day.

But the process is not random. Every elements are connected to one another. For example, the flower lady had to be next to the barbie kissing Ken because of the shape of the body, who was entailing the lobster-body next to it.

Dali's flower head/ Lady Gaga inspired by Dali

The pearl legs,where the hardest thing to make technically,to make them moving like a mobile. I found my inspiration from the golden barbie chandelier she has in her house.

Game of spot the difference- i one picture legs are up, in the other legs are down. What i like in this necklace is everything is movable, it's always different because you can change the position of arms and legs, and look at it through different angles!

I guess I was influenced by my trip to India, sticking a lot of bindies i bring from there, which are creating kind of three-dimensional tattoos.

With this necklace i wanted to show that reality is not fixed but "transformable". You can transform and recreate your own version of barbie who is a mass product. They all have the same body and the same silly smile. But on my necklace, Ken kissing barbie has a woman body and his wearing a really kitsch and cheesy Jesus necklace, A woman has a child face and a crocodile tail, or a flower head. You can decorate or customise barbie, putting bindies on her face or strass on her eyebrows.

This necklace is like a jewel fresco, a syncretic Sixtine Chapel or a sculptural comic strip where every signal detail tells you a story. It's a bit like a "where is wally?" book where you can't get the whole picture in one time. For example there is a stuffed trophy crocodile which the tail is coming out from a barbie body, or an indian goddess is eating an ice-cream.

For the private view, I was wearing a dolls and barbies dress and people had always the impression to talk to several persons at the same time "i'm really happy to meet you with your dolls".