Q&A with Christelle Oyiri
The first recipient of Tate’s new Infinities Commission delivers a mix of audio-visual immersion and sculpture to explore the body through different cycles
On the 17th June, the Tate Modern unveiled a new large-scale installation, designed specifically for the gallery's cavernous, bunker-like room known as the Tanks. The installation is part of a new annual commission called the Infinities Commission that seeks to showcase the pinnacle of multidisciplinary experimental contemporary art. Hypnotic, clever, and at times grotesque, Christelle Oyiri’s In a Perpetual Remix Where is my Own Song? offers viewers a sardonic commentary on the modern day. The Paris-born multidisciplinary artist and DJ under the pseudonym CRYSTALMESS, is the first to receive the Tate’s new Infinities Commission. Oyiri’s latest installation gives us something to gnaw on, not just bone but fat. And Oyiri knew it. Despite declaring that she was shy at the beginning of her introductory speech, her effortless cool bleed into her words as she spoke with confidence about themes like the beauty industrial complex. The Tanks room was dark upon entering apart from six bronze sculptures of Oyiri in various stages of transformation elevated on large speakers. Lights flashed, music swelled and distorted and the film that played out on the wall of the Tanks addressed digital culture, beauty standards, and the commodification of the Black female body. I was reminded of the disgust people had expressed towards Thomas J. Price’s statue of a Black woman in Times Square. Its soundtrack wove between everything from industrial to breakbeat, climaxing in an effervescent symphony of electronica. Like its key theme “cycle, repeat, spiral, again”, I could not have witnessed In a Perpetual Remix Where is my Own Song? only once. Instead, it lured me in, so I became part of its cycle, transfixed by its fractured, infectious quality. I left, stomach churned from the surgical imagery but proud to have witnessed such a unique capturing of our time. We headed down to preview to speak to Oyiri the installation.
You started as a DJ, what was the process of expanding your creative work into other disciplines like?
I’ve been exploring visual art my whole life. Oulimata Gueye, who is a member of the Infinities Commission jury, was the first person who gave me a shot as a visual artist. Seeing her name on the jury panel took me back to the beginning of sharing my work with the public. In 2018, she was doing an insane conference about cyber Afro-feminism. What I was exploring at the time through my writing and production was speaking to this ethos.I knew I wanted to be part of the programme, so I asked if I could be involved in any way. She connected me with this guy in Belgium who owned an old movie theatre and was looking for people making experimental short films. So I took my own camera and started filming and filming and filming and piecing together old archival footage I had, and this eventually became Collective Amnesia: In Memory of Logobi. It was never about being a contemporary artist for me. It was really about a need to be part of what she was creating at the time, which was a conversation between Black female French artists. I was making art for myself and my friends. I didn’t know what it meant to be an artist, but I knew I wanted to create beyond DJing.
In a Perpetual Remix Where is my Own Song? addresses the overwhelming presence of cycles as part of the female experience, in relation to the body, and as part of the modern experience, in relation to trends. How are you interacting with the inescapable influence of trends in art?
I have been a DJ for almost 12 years. Right now, I am trying to navigate and understand where to fit my individuality in a world that is seeing more and more female DJs who look like me and play the same things that I play. So I have been wondering, where do I situate myself, and how do I find some kind of root? I think for me, navigating trends is about finding a balance between soulfulness and experimentation, to merge the two and keep them in dialogue all the time. I think trends also have a lot to do with youth and youthfulness, so you must find a balance between being comfortable with growing old, but also not fossilising yourself and turning into a graveyard too early. Make sure there is a relationship between your younger self and your future self.
Experiencing the installation, I felt so many emotions in just 13 minutes. I squirmed at grotesque images, laughed at references I recognised like Pokémon, and felt empowered. Was your goal to make the audience each have their own individual experience? What are you hoping people will feel?
I love that you got the Pokémon reference because some people just don't get it. If you’re a '90s baby or an early 2000s baby, you’ll get it. I want people to feel vindicated after they leave. I want people to leave with more questions than answers, so they can really dive into it, like they deep dive into a book. I wanted to make something that feels very generous, because I feel like a lot of artists in my generation don’t like to be generous, they just want to be like “this is a piece of paper” and that’s it. I’m a maximalist when it comes to art! I just want people to feel held, but also shaken. The beginning of In a Perpetual Remix Where is my Own Song? starts kind of like a car wreck that you can’t look away from, but at the end, with the Squarepusher track, I want people to engage. It’s like an opera without actual singers or a performance; there’s only the track playing, so it’s for you to choose to be active or not, to choose to dance or be static, to not approach it as a white tube, but as an experimental space.
What are you finding exciting in the art and music scene at the moment?
I'm really inspired by my own friends like Covcõ, who is constantly pushing the boundaries of what African culture and meme culture have in store for us. I think Africa is a relatively young continent, and therefore, its relationship to hope and time is very different from Europe. Covcõ engages with this idea, so I’m excited for what she has to come. Also, my friend Hannah Rose Stewart, who helped me with the 3D stylisation of the sculptures in In a Perpetual Remix, Where is my Own Song? I think she is one of the greatest cinematographers and artists of our time. She influenced the way I have been thinking about space and time lapsing, and just how to fuck with people’s heads.
In 'In a Perpetual Remix Where is my Own Song?' your own body features very frequently both in the statues and in the film. How does this feel, and why did you decide to include your own image?
It's just awkward. I do not like it, but it was necessary for me at the time. I was struggling with the idea of figurative sculptures and authorship, and was questioning what it means to represent somebody else fairly. And because I didn't find answers to this question, I was like, in the meantime, it is going to be me. This is the starting point for my investigation into understanding how to represent people who are not me. This work is not so much introspective, but it takes me as the entry point.
What does being an artist mean to you at this moment in history?
I need to find a balance between honouring my individuality and my feelings and also delivering a message that resonates with the times. I don’t have the capacity to carry the misery of the world or to deliver a message that is going to shift the masses, because I think that contemporary is relatively niche. We don't have the pop-cultural appeal of a rapper or a pop star. We’re not in normal people’s houses, we’re only in rich people’s houses, so it’s a very complicated navigation because you have to appeal to people who, most of the time, are the root of the problem. You have to be really brave as a contemporary artist to be interesting. You have to shake the table; otherwise, you’re a decorative artist, you make paintings for people to feel good about themselves, and it’s cool, but that’s not what I do.
See In a Perpetual Remix Where is my Own Song? at the Tate Modern until August 25th
See more from Christelle here
Article by Edith Matthias
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