1 If you weren’t an artist, what else would you be?
What I would like to do is nothing and that would quite quickly turn into something and what that something would be I am not sure. Maybe an art collector.
2 Name 3 of your least favourite artists.
I appreciate most artists’ work but I cannot bare the work of Salvador Dali, Antony Gormley, and Sam Taylor Wood.
3. Anytime, any place – which artist’s body would you most like to inhabit?
John Latham – but mostly his mind.
4 What is your favourite ‘ism’?
Masochism (*!)…Sorry I mean individualism, rather than any historical ism.
5 What was the most intelligent thing that someone said or wrote about your work?
Peter Suchin extract from his writing,’At a moment when established institutions of learning are, in England anyway, in crisis, with universities simultaneously charging highly increased student fees whilst purporting to democratise access to education, Mitrentse focuses not so much on this ostensible cultural expansion as upon notions of the alternative, the marginal and the secret school or anti-institution. These book proposals then become the literal building blocks of the structures within the drawings, a library the contents of which have been determined by its imaginary users, and not by those in power who would seek to constrict and contain the culture of the book.’
6 And the dumbest?
Could I have these drawings on canvas?
7 Which artists would you most like to rip off, sorry, I mean appropriate as a critique of originality and authorship?
I cannot avoid referring to the father Marchel Duchamp and Piero Manzoni for obvious reasons.
8 Do you care what your art costs? State your reasons!
Yes. All artists must do. Art is a profession and as much as we’d like to deny it, is part of commerce/capitalism – but that does not necessarily reflect the actual value of my artworks, that’s what the art market decides upon. Prices are usually in agreement with galleries I collaborate each time I exhibit a body of work. I have been exhibited work since 1996. I also like donating works for charities or philanthropic organizations and give works away to friends when I feel they truly desire them.
9 What are the three big ideas that you would like your work to express?
I construct my own reality world, which alludes to non-normalised idiosyncratic institutions, shaped by people’s contribution and which evolves over time, being designed to provoke changes in the function of cultural interaction rather than being controlled by the institutionalized establishment. The ways in which I conceive of the world using schools and books represents the idea that the world can be organized differently, from what TV presents. It’s a way of being all-inclusive but at the same time locating it within the idea of a personality in time.
10 Are you a political artist?
I live in a world where social and political reality is mushrooming. Call it what you will political artist or engaged art, social practice, avant-garde, dialogical aesthetics, community art, public art, ….I like making art that gets the public to re-interpret their ideology and emanations of social experiences, at least I hope it does -in some way those who encounter it. Like in the Flag print series the 10 global symbols, juxtaposing notions of education in relation to the believe systems represented within these Emblems. I use the book as direct visual material (rather than the printed text used in political propaganda) in an attempt to emphasize the need for reconstruction of these ideologies. A critic on the fragile nature of distributing knowledge in the current Educational and socio-political persecution widely experienced within the global crisis.
11 How do you start the process of making work?
My Art making is the relationship of the stimuli of now, and ideas that come from my childhood. It is totally fluid like the way life works. Within the context of the Library project, inventing an infinite systematic methodology – an ‘Online Bibliographic Data Flow of book titles selected by international contributors from the art world, i.e. artists, curators, museuologist, writers, art lovers, or just fans, people that have followed my work, each of them adding to the construction of an infinite library; This is the resource material, that I then direct in r’e-drawing’ the cultural institution using Drawing as an ‘autonomous’ art form in the shaping of the Library Volumes. It’s an idea that I had back in the school.
12 What is your favourite cheese?
Feta Cheese with olive oil and oregano.
13 What’s next for you?
A collaborative Billboard interactive project at Greenwich South London as part of Deptford X, and the curation of Linear B group exhibition in response to works from the collection of Late Greek Artist Nikos Alexiou in November at Stephen Lawrence gallery, University of Greenwich.
14 If you could ask yourself one question what would it be? And what would be the answer?
How to separate what I do from art and art from what I do? It’s a little scary when i think about not being able to escape the art world and everything that surrounds it. Have not found the answer yet.
You can see Christina now at:Christina Mitrentse at Art Work Space
