Karen Azoulay is a fabulous mixed-media visual and performance artist. She and I have been friends, neighbors, and admirers of each others work for a few years now. Karen explores and expresses the relationships between people and the natural world in her work. This is a theme I also investigate in my photography, mostly through observation and literal representations. Karen, however, approaches it from a symbolic and mythological perspective.

I photographed Karen in her studio creating one of the images for her new series, Sculpture After the Apocalypse. To produce these other-worldly images, Karen creates a living sculpture using the head and face of a real person. She then photographs the sculpture/person using various techniques to alter and obscure the image.

I also asked Karen to take me to a place in the city that inspires her. She chose the The American Museum Of Natural History, citing the mineral collection, ancient textiles, and the animal dioramas as influences. The museum is one of my favorite places in the city as well. I’ve been there many times, but it was really wonderful to go with Karen and see it through her eyes.

Interview by Kate Bolick

The interview with Karen that accompanies my photographs is by her friend and collaborator, Kate Bolick. Kate is a New York-based freelance writer and contributing editor at The Atlantic. She is at work on her first book, Among the Suitors: Single Women I Have Loved, forthcoming from Crown/Random House. In 2009, she and Karen collaborated on a Futurist-inspired banquet for Slate and
ReadyMade magazines.

Kate Bolick: For most people, nature means flowers and trees and mountains—all the bucolic touchstones we drive to the country to appreciate. But your focus is on the more ephemeral and less-accessible aspects of the natural world: mists and wind and fire and geodes and stars and fireworks (which, of course, are man-made, but do seem more celestial than worldly). Could you talk about this?

Karen Azoulay: My focus has never been to recreate the beauty around us, but to explore the symbolic relationship that exists between humans and the natural world. This way of thinking about landscape is rooted in all mythological traditions. It’s a type of animism. In some myths, elemental forces are personified with human attributes as deities, and in others, people are transformed into a tree, a pillar of salt, or a solid rock. There are creation myths that describe clay being sculpted into forms that were then animated into the first people.

I make representations of the night sky because I think it’s fascinating that we direct wishes to shooting stars, or that astrological events might influence our lives. Because the subject of these artworks is invisible, my strategy is to completely ignore what stars actually look like, and to instead present them as a constellation of hands holding birthday and Sabbath candles. The final piece somehow conjures a recognizable image.

Water, fog, fire, and wind are favorite subjects of mine because they’re not easy to grasp. They are so powerful, yet already almost invisible. Fireworks have a similar quality because they’re so fleeting. I have always returned to fireworks as a theme because I consider them to be manmade weatherscapes. They are a hybrid between rainstorms and confetti. We take on the role of Zeus, and create this thunder and rain of fire, which explodes in the sky in order to display the feeling of celebration.

Your references to mythology and wishes and celebrations have religious connotations. Do you consider your work to be a form of spirituality?

The short answer is yes.

Although I personally don’t subscribe to any religious ideology, I consider the mythologies and superstitious practices that I reference to be a result of an innate intuition that humans have always possessed, one that keeps us deeply connected to our natural surroundings. We manipulate everything around us—we facet gems, forge metals, carve totems—but one day, long after we have decomposed, all of our monuments will be reclaimed by the earth as ruins.

“My focus has never been to recreate the beauty around us, but to explore the symbolic relationship that exists between humans and the natural world.”

You rely on “humble” materials—toilet paper, toothpicks, aluminum foil, old ribbon, food—to make your fantastical creations, yet you are staunchly outside the aesthetic most commonly used with “found” and “reused” objects. How do you choose the elements you use?

Since themes of transformation appear through out my work, I think it’s fitting that I dip into both traditional and nontraditional art supplies. My materials are selected according to color, texture, and the general potential that I see in an object. Past that, I don’t discriminate. Usually, the materials are manipulated enough that it’s not totally obvious what I’ve used.

I like to think that my imagery is both serious and silly. I’m laughing when I come up with some of these ideas, and enjoy the moment when a viewer catches on to what something is made of. A few of the materials I use are totally perishable, which is one reason that the resulting piece is often a photograph. The rocky landscapes in my current series are made by gluing oatmeal to sponges and then dipping them in coffee, and mixing plaster with pigments, tealeaves, and chopped-up licorice.

The Paul Thek show at the Whitney last year was so inspiring in many ways. He passed away before anyone thought to ask him what materials he was using, so preparing for the exhibition was a juicy mystery for the conservators. I loved reading about the scientific methods and detective work used to determine his materials!

“I’m laughing when I come up with some of these ideas, and enjoy the moment when a viewer catches on to what something is made of.”

You frequently use “models”—as in, real live humans. Sometimes you cover them in clay (which could almost be a reversal of the creation myths you referenced!). Other times you put them in costumes. Could you talk about the roles of people in your work?

The process of sitting for one of these photos is very uncomfortable. I only ask friends, and they are all so unbelievably generous and kind to let me slather them with clay, as you mentioned, and render them blind and mute for a couple of hours, all while remaining very still.

Human bodies integrated with sculptural elements create a literal translation of nature personified. Specifically, I’m obsessed with images of body parts emerging from water, fire, earth, and so on. Even when a photograph features an unidentified hand, it’s a hand of a friend, and in a way, I consider it to be a portrait. There are so many talented and creative women in my life, and I like to think that I’m slowly casting them all, one by one, as muses in my imaginary, alternate universe.

Some artists are catholic in their medium, only ever making oil paintings, or just marble sculptures, say. But you go wherever your imagination takes you, whether the end result is a photograph, an installation, or a video of an installation. Could you tell me about the challenges and rewards of working in such disparate mixed media?

It’s tricky to summarize what kind of artist I am when asked at a cocktail party. Labels can be helpful, but like many creative people, I hate being put in a “box.” I enjoy many methods, and narrowing one’s approach in order to be easily understood strikes me as old-fashioned. All of my work is an intersection of sculpture and performance, even though when presented live with performers, it’s mostly quite still—nothing “happens,” and there is no beginning, middle or end.

Most of my time is spent manipulating materials, and I stubbornly refuse to learn any technical photographic skills because I just don’t have any romantic feelings about it. I like to borrow a good camera and then snap away until I’ve captured what I was after. If I want the image to suggest the appearance of fog, I will make a tactile “fog” and shake it in front of the lens, so if I had to specify, I would say that I am a sculptor.

“We manipulate everything around us—we facet gems, forge metals, carve totems—but one day, long after we have decomposed, all of our monuments will be reclaimed by the earth
as ruins.”

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