Kris Lemsalu

Kris Lemsalu, born in 1985 in , Estonia, Living Content You grew up in Tallinn, talks about why she switched a future in Estonia, went to school in Denmark and fashion for a future in art. She reveals how , and now you live in . Do you feel attending a secret party in Estonia further that Estonia has had a particular influence on sparked her interest in costume making and your practice? performance, and how traveling informs her work. Now, as a skilled ceramicist, Kris knows Kris Lemsalu I think that a lot of the her materials intimately and integrates both materials that I use can be traced back to my sculptural elements and performative acts in childhood but I really don’t read these roots as her installations, to map the world around her directly connected to Estonia. For instance, I as a semi-fictional ground and to create what spent a lot of time in the countryside, milking she likes to call “a personal newspaper”. cows and stuff like that, so I have this direct — experience with nature and animals. It’s a difficult question. To get to the core of this

Living Content 7 1 Freud would have to invite me to lie down on his couch and dig into my childhood LC The way you’re talking about the memories... physical feeling of making objects with your own hands, seems to be very gratifying for you LC Oh no, no (laughing). We don’t want to - just looking at your work I can imagine that get in psychoanalysis. But tell me a bit about it must have taken you years to understand how you got into making art. the materials you are working with and to learn their reactions. There has been a lot KL I’ve never been into the idea of of interest recently in craft and ceramics in studying art. Initially, it was more about contemporary art. Do you intend to address deciding where I want to be. I studied skill in your practice at all? ceramics first in the Academy in Estonia, and after that, I moved to , where KL When I was studying sculpture in I continued with ceramics, although it was Vienna I actually wanted to get rid of the more of a design faculty. And after Denmark, material. To do a mini protest. But after a I went back to Estonia and finally to Vienna while, I somehow understood my material in where I spent six or seven years, traveling on more depth and it captivated me. For me it’s and off. very personal: I learned to know my materials very well, I know the techniques and now I can LC It’s interesting that you say that you play around. I don’t really question or address didn’t want to study art initially. How did you technical skill in a larger sense. It is just a tool get into ceramics in the first place then? to get where I want to go and to express what I desire to express. KL I was taking ceramic classes as a But it’s true; I do see a lot of contemporary teenager for five or six years and I also got artists working with ceramic and I see how into fashion. I even had a little company. the work becomes more about fetishizing the Estonia is a small country and if you do material rather than using it as a tool or a skill. something it’s really easy to shine and be A lot of works are now stopping in this kind noticed. I had a lot of support for that, of ‘oh, I can build this and then I can glaze everything was going well, and then the time it and it looks shiny’. The idea is secondary came when I had to choose what to study to the fascination with the material. But it further. It could’ve been fashion but I found also makes me happy to see that ceramics is that the fashion world was a little bit flat for coming out of this handy craft or pottery. me. So I decided to study ceramics because I missed the physical feeling of making things. LC Your work contains a lot of figuration. That was it. I knew the material, I was already The animals, that are also reappearing quite hands-on with it, so it was a straightfor- characters in your work, seem to be caught ward decision. somewhere between abstraction and

Living Content 7 2 figuration. Can you tell me a bit about your just as a mode of expressing myself and work process and how these characters come breaking down the boredom of fixed systems to life? around me. There was a rave I went to every month, organized in different warehouses KL Most of the time I’m traveling and this and they always had a dress code. This dress also means that by observing and taking code was a starting point for me to make notes of everything I see and visit, I’m working these costumes because with the costumes all the time. I’m not really experimenting and I could enter a special room in the rave that fiddling around in the studio but it’s quite a was always curated by an artist, an actor or slow and painful process anyway. I know what other creative people. It was really like an I’m doing: I have a visual image in my head Estonian Studio 54 party. There were always before starting the work. Then follows the super crazy things happening: bondage execution: I know the material so well that I shows, fashion shows, weird events. It was can work it after that image in my head. And quite a scene for almost two years. So, as I after I’m done with that, I’m writing down for said, I started doing costumes for this event myself how it came about. I’m finding out and even after this, I kept on doing costumes more by writing about it after, by gaining a bit for my own fun. At some point, in Vienna, of distance. I want my work to have a direct somebody asked me to do a performance. experience with the viewer, something that I never considered it up until that point, so you feel in your stomach. Of course, there is it was really by accident that I entered this not a single narrative in these works; there performance life. are many stories and many experiences that I worked a lot at the beginning with an artist overlap. I want to leave certain openness group from Vienna. With them it was always to these experiences. For some people, the more Viennese Actionist-style; going wild works may seem funny or humorous and on stage with costumes, body fluids, and that’s very good. For others, who step closer everything. Now I’m using performance in my and closer, a slightly darker side, or a more own practice because I feel that some of my complex narrative, appears. I really want the works need my presence to keep on living, viewers to have these different relationships or even for them to have their own life in the with the works, so they can find their own first place. Most of the performances that I path through them. make consist of me being inside the object, motionless, for hours. It’s more like a baptism LC So how do your performances relate to or something like this. the objects you are making? LC It’s very interesting that the perfor- KL Well with the performances it’s funny mances are inlaid in the physical work. because when I was in high school I started to For the work Car2Go from 2016, that you compose costumes and different characters presented at Guido W. Baudach gallery in

Living Content 7 3 Berlin, you also prepared a very sensual so I was completely open for it to be beautiful performance. I was reading that the or a complete disaster! I worked with four brick-men holding the yellow umbrellas were lookalikes of celebrities: Prince, David Bowie, a reference to the Umbrella Movement. Can and George Michael. The performance was you tell me more about how this political about the immortality of characters that are reference came about? bigger than life. Ah and I also have a five month residency planned in Mexico City, which I’m really looking forward to. KL There is no separation between my work and my life. That means that when I’m traveling, I’m unconsciously absorbing what is happening around me. For example, the project you mentioned came from one rather bizarre event altogether. I was in Sri Lanka, where people drive like crazy on the streets and while everybody was in this hectic atmosphere, I suddenly saw this car driving really, really slowly, with a regular family with babies in their arms, walking behind it. I realized that it was a funeral march. These are the types of events that I see and they start to linger in my head. I can’t get rid of them somehow. But of course, that’s not the only way to translate the work. This is built up with many other layered stories. So I would say that Car2Go came up after half of year after seeing that. So it is just like my personal newspaper let’s say.

LC So what’s next in your personal newspaper? Do you have any projects coming up or recent projects you did that you’re particularly excited about?

KL I just did a large installation for Frieze in October and a performance before the opening of the fair: that was fun. I made this performance with five other people - the first time I collaborated with people in this way -

Living Content 7 4 Living Content 7 5 Living Content 7 6 Living Content 7 7 Living Content 7 8 Living Content 7 9 Living Content 7 10 Living Content 7 11 Image Sources and Bibliography Page 9 _Kris Lemsalu Phantom Camp, 2012 Page 5 Ceramics, sleeping bags _Kris Lemsalu Dimensions variable Father is in Town, 2012 © of Temnikova & Kasela gallery and the Ceramics, lamb fur, wild pig fur, foam artist Dimensions variable © of Temnikova & Kasela gallery and the Page 10 artist _ Kris Lemsalu 3 Of Life, 2017 Page 6 Porcelain, textile, metal, rubber, wood, _Kris Lemsalu plastic, soil Angels Gone Missing, 2017 120 x 120 x 60 cm (47 x 47 x 23 in) Ceramics, fabric, mixed media © of Temnikova & Kasela gallery and the Dimensions variable artist © of Temnikova & Kasela gallery and the artist Page 11 _ Kris Lemsalu Page 7 3 Of Life, 2017 _Kris Lemsalu Porcelain, textile, metal, rubber, wood, Car2Go, 2016 plastic, soil Metal construction, glass, plastic, bricks, 120 x 120 x 60 cm (47 x 47 x 23 in) blankets, ceramics, textiles, © of Temnikova & Kasela gallery and the Dimensions variable artist © of Temnikova & Kasela gallery and the artist

Page 8 _Kris Lemsalu Car2Go, 2016 Metal construction, glass, plastic, bricks, blankets, ceramics, textiles, Dimensions variable © of Temnikova & Kasela gallery and the artist

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