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Cubism Meets Broodthaers Meets IKEA

Marcel Janco Interviews Donelle Woolford

This interview was first published in IDEA magazine. Marcel Janco is a curator and writer based in Cluj, Romania, and co-founder of Galeria Sabot. He is a former associate editor of Uovo magazine.

MARCEL JANCO: Your show at Wallspace in 2008 consisted of works made from wood scraps, latex paint and cardboard screws hanging on the wall. The space was enhanced by plants standing on minimal plinths. It appeared to me like Cubism and Marcel Broodthaers meeting Ikea. What do you think?

DONELLE WOOLFORD: I think that's a pretty good description. Broodthaers’ work touched on three themes that are very important for a successful business strategy: 1] choose something and focus all your energy on it; 2] one thing is good, two of the same is better, three of the same thing is even better, etc. 3] once you have someone's attention, make them laugh and confuse them into buying something.

MJ: Where did you train and who was the artist who made you think you wanted to become an artist yourself, if any? What are your influences in life?

DW: I first trained with the little known artist Lester Hayes, at a summer camp in North Carolina. I went to school at Yale and got a degree in graphic design, but I was really more interested in painting and sculpture. Joe Scanlan was the artist there who made me realize that I had good ideas, I had a good sense of humor, and that I could make it on my own. He also helped me see the legacy of my interests in narrative and mythmaking. Not so much Warhol, that's everyone's boring influence. He turned me on to Piero Manzoni, Adrian Piper, Broodthaers, Blinky Palermo, Sherrie Levine, David Hammons.

MJ: Your following show at Wallspace in 2010 had a quite similar body of work but here you activated the room with a one-night performance where you were “talking to yourself.” I’m saying this because I’ve read that people have seen you performed by Namik Minter in the United Arab Emirates, by Abigail Ramsay in London, and by Jennifer Kidwell in New York. For the performance where you were “talking to yourself,” it was Ms. Kidwell and Ms. Ramsay portraying you simultaneously. Could you please clarify, if possible?

DW: That’s easy — I am not real. I am a character whose story is being written and played out by a number of authors and actors simultaneously. I exist as a known entity of sorts, just like a character in a well-known play. But each time I am "on stage," so to speak, each time I have a show, my character is transformed by the art that’s on view and the subjective interpretations of the actors who portray me.

MJ: In her texts, Alison Gingeras argues that artists like Warhol and Kippenberger were using their persona as an artistic medium. Is that your case? Being a female artist do you think there’s a legacy as such for female artists?

DW: I guess so, although unlike Warhol my persona remains unfixed. I prefer Kippenberger because he really did transform himself over the years from earnest young hopeful to savvy operator to midde-aged rhinceros. And despite Kippenberger's celebrity as a person, all his best works were made in private — they were the anxious product of a studio practice. All the artists I mentioned above, Manzoni et al., are important to me because, unlike Warhol, the idea of fiction and celebrity for them is still located in the artwork rather than the personality of the artist who made it. The merde d'artiste, the snowballs, the sharecroppers, and the hotel drawings are what circulate and become known while the artist as a persona remains somewhat unclear.

MJ: A friend of mine founded his seminar at the Yale School of Art upon these 3 topics: 1] an anti-hierarchical perception of the art field, in which artists, curators, gallerists, collectors, editors and critics are all considered “players” of the same game; 2] an expanded definition of practice, in which the figure of the artist is considered not only the “creator” of an artwork, but a cultural operator able to write, manage galleries, curate and collect; 3] the consideration of the entire discourse around the artwork, including its conception, creation, production, presentation, distribution and dissemination. Is that your case as well?

DW: No, I am an artist. If I have an anti-hierarchical perception it is against the idea that an artist has to have an essential identity that is embodied by one person only. I am anti-hierarchical in that I can be represented by a half dozen people in a half a dozen places simultaneously, and all of them are real and true and actual representations of Donelle Woolford and her work. This one is tall, that one speaks German, this one is grumpy, that one is beautiful.

What is interesting about your friend's approach to me is that the more you break down the hierarchies and the more everyone can be responsible for all facets of cultural production, the more possible it is for an uberproducer like Hans Ulrich-Obrist to run absolutely everything. Your friend's approach can create a useful democracy and confusion, but it can also create monsters. That is an interesting risk to take, but I am not sure it is worth it. Look what it gave us: Tino Sehgal!

MJ: “Remake,” your installation presented at the 8th Sharjah Biennial, was like bringing a microcosm of a studio — your studio, I assume since it was full of woodcuts — to the exhibition space. It was like showing something we don’t usually see. It reminded me of the recreation of Brancusi’s Studio outside the Pompidou in Paris and I think Josh Smith has done the same in the past. How do you position your choice? Is it about voyeurism and celebration, as it is for Brancusi, or rather the more Josh Smith — like a pornographic or bulimic gesture? Is there a third way or a middle path perhaps?

DW: I prefer the model of Raymond Roussel, those refrigerated chambers in Locus Solus where recently deceased people eternally re-enact the moments leading up to their death through the injection of a special chemical. All the accoutrement of their final moments are in the chamber with them, like evidence at a crime scene or stage props, to make the event as accurate as possible. I think the artist on display is like that, the public display being a kind of perpetual death acted out for the sake of knowledge and entertainment.

MJ: On the website of your Paris gallery, Chez Valentin, your biography doesn’t have the same structure as that of the other artists. It doesn’t include group and solo shows. Instead, it recounts your life since you were born, as you find sometimes in catalogues of dead artists. Why’s that?

DW: See above.

MJ: In a text about your work, Joe Tang ends with writing: “Donelle Woolford, Narrative artist. Donelle Woolford, Cubist painter. Donelle Woolford, avatar. The possibilities are endless.” Could you please explain? Who is Donelle Woolford?

DW: That’s a good question. I don't know. Maybe a better question is, "What is Donelle Woolford?" A folk legend? A product? A myth? Or maybe she is the precise outcome of a demographic that is continually calibrated to reflect our collective desire for an artist like Donelle Woolford.