In conversation with Marya Kazoun

● How was it for you growing up in Beirut?

It was great except for the war part- maybe not after all. It helped me become what I am now. Experiencing raw fear, giving value to things you would normally take for granted, like the feeling of security, going to school safely, having drinking water and electricity.

● How did you become an artist?

I think there was this need to say something. Words are too direct sometimes… I was more interested in the emotion that an object, a thing, or a person’s behavior could convey…

● How different is for a Lebanese-Canadian woman to become an artist?

When I was young, I have to say I had a relatively open and very modern upbringing. My mom is a chemist, but she doesn’t work, she stopped when the war started in 1975 then she had to look after us, and my dad is a pharmacist and owns a pharmacy. I was expected to become a pharmacist like him- I went to French Protestant school there where I studied French, Arabic, and English and Bible every Thursday although my family is muslim. My parents wanted me to study and know about and of everything-
We had to flee the war several times. Our first move was to Switzerland and the second was to Canada where my family decided to emigrate and stay they there. I think that seeing and experiencing lots of different things made me want to say and do a lot of things and being what I am with a rich baggage made it easier for me, I have a big baggage. I have a lot to say. I believe my background helped a lot in the shape, expression and form of my artwork.

● What made you become a performance artist?

You’re asking me about performance?
Shhhht!!!
I consider myself a novice in the field.
I reflected a lot on that topic. It made a lot of things clearer…
I had organized a photo shoot for an installation I had just ‘finished’. I had made an outfit but wasn’t quite sure why I had done it, what was it purpose? I was wearing it and got in one of the pictures of the installation to show the scale of my work. When I got my slides back and looked carefully at them, it suddenly hit me, it all made sense to see myself in the works…

● In the 51st Biennale di Venezia’s catalogue you talk about the need to inhabit your work. Why is that?

I felt that the work needed me to support it, to help it sustain itself. I first started with embodying the works, becoming part of them, having a similar external shell, in a way to be like them, to be ‘their equal’. I had something more, I was alive and moving I sometimes became the protagonist of the situation to balance their weaknesses. Sometimes there is no story. Sometimes the story/ script comes after the object is made. Sometimes the script comes first and than it gets elaborated and becomes clearer while working on the piece. There’s a lot of theater influence in my performances.

● What is your process when using materials?

I try to let them guide me and tell me what they could become. I ask them, they show me.

● How does identity plays a role in works like Self-portrait for example?

In this work there was a big reflection on self-image, the mirror and questioning my identity. The perception I had of myself.
Who was I? I’m not sure I am a human being. I had no say in the form or presence of myself on this earth. This work is what I am, really.

● Luggage is a fascinating work of yours. What do carry in it?

Different things in the different pouches, I carry my background, my past, memories, we are all travelers and we carry a lot around….

● Many of your works are direct references to body parts like fat, hair, organs and skin. What is this compulsion in deconstructing the body?

It is more a kind of fascination examining things closely- Body parts and organs are very fragile, if you think of it. If any thing gets damaged, it’s handicapping. I perform operations on them to heal them. Sometimes dark little secrets hide in them so stitching them up is a kind of way to protect, hide and burry them.

●Have you set limits when using your body in the performative act?

Not really I just listen to what the piece needs.

● Scatological concerns surface in your series of photographs called Daily Shit. What prompted you into creating such body of work and why?

I first started by taking images of my stool when I started seeing it. I had never really looked at it. When I moved to NYC the toilets were all shallow. I started experimenting with the kind of food I was eating and what kind of shape and color my body was able to make… It’s a kind of guilty pleasure taking all these photographs. Sometimes mixed with some guilt and shame. I slowly started comfortable showing it. I was almost proud of it. I was able to give it an interesting shape and colour… I all the shit of life, I indulged in retaining that I was showing the world.

● As an artist who has participated in the 51st Biennale di Venezia, what is your advise to an emerging artist?

Be as authentic and real as possible in art making and work hard, I guess…

Please, talk about the art scene situation back home in Lebanon.
I think the art scene in the Middle East is developing very fast, very conceptual, but I feel that it is still more directed towards a more documentary type of work. There’s a lot of direct video and photography works.

This conversation was first published in Futuro Magazine in March 2007