22/01/16
Interview: Virgile Ittah
Once you have seen the work
of the London-based French artist Virgile Ittah (b1981, Paris), it is not
something you will easily forget. Her life-size, haunting wax bodies, seemingly
melting or decomposing as they lay collapsed across their metal bed frames or
chairs, seek not to be sculptures, but to be human beings. Their transparency
gives them an eerie, uncanny quality, and yet, in their abjection lies a
beauty, perhaps a result of their inherent contradictions: fragility versus
solidity, warmth versus coldness, life versus death.
Currently one of the 14
women artists in the Saatchi Gallery’s first all-women exhibition, Champagne
Life, Ittah spoke to Studio International about her technique, her current
collaboration with her partner, Kai Yoda, and her thoughts on the status of female
artists today.
Read this interview here