Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro: I would like you to tell me a little about the process of this new video you are presenting at the Bienal. How do you fit it in your production?
Maria Laet: I identify with and am fascinated by the things that live more in silence, which happen without being noted, in parallel to a world that speaks louder. It is an intuitive process, as if this universe had called me for a dialogue.
When I came here to the Bienal Pavilion, I was struck by the immense void created by the very impressive, imposing architecture. And precisely because everything is so large and important, my attention was drawn even more to the subtleties of this empty space, to what is most fragile and silent in this context, what is not being seen. The contrast between these worlds, and where they meet, is very powerful for me.
A further aspect is that many of my works take place through some surface, a sort of skin that is crossed through, like the sand that is crossed through by the needle and thread in Untitled (Areia, Londres) [Untitled (Sand, London)], 2008, the permeable or cut paper that is crossed through by the paint in Diálogo (Sopro) [Dialogue (Blow)], 2008, and in Sobre o que não se contém [About What is Not Contained], 2013, and the asphalt that is crossed through by the milk in Leito [Bed], 2013 – these works all take place on both sides of these skins, they talk about this relation between the inside and the outside of the body.
In the pavilion, at the place where the work was recorded, there is a skin of the building which is the brise-soleil, and another one very close to it, which is the palm tree. The relation between these two presences, of architecture and of nature, creates a specific situation there, where the sunlight does something unlike anywhere else in the building. At that specific place, moment and angle, the sunlight goes through a little hole generated by the overlaying of these skins, and gains life and form inside the pavilion. We see inside a universe that contains another, which allows itself to be permeated by the other, by another reality.
That spot of light is a phenomenon that can be seen depending on the time of the day, the emptiness of the pavilion, and the angle of viewpoint. It is silent, solitary and ungraspable, it disappears in a few minutes and is never again the same. It condenses for me these sensations and thoughts of something that is at the same time fragile and strong, fleeting and eternal, vulnerable and powerful, inner and outer.
G: You spoke about permeability, crossing through, entering. And I wonder if you make a parallel between this and the way that art affects the viewer, how these relations are constructed.
M: Yes. I would not even think about the relationships with art – which also makes sense – but I would think about the relations between people. In nature you find stones that are more or less porous, and more or less permeable. They are ways of being in the world, of relating with what comes from the outside. You either receive the influence, the energy, the gaze of the other, or you don’t. Therefore, in this sense the building also becomes a permeable body.
G: How would you relate your work, for example, with the question of attention?
M: I think that, in my work, attention has a lot to do with a thought that wanders, like a daydream. In the daydream you find what concerns you, without seeking for it. It is a kind of attention that allows itself to find what it will.
G: That’s interesting, because there is an entire body of thought about attention that tries to break the equivalence that many people make between attention and a fixed gaze. The eye is the perception, and perception is fluid, it is always open and in movement. We have an idea that paying attention is looking at a fixed place. It is a very artificial idea, because really the attention is always directed at what is happening in one’s surroundings. Your work has a little of this.
M: It is an intuitive gaze.
G: It is an open gaze, it is a gaze that allows itself to be affected, allows itself to be permeated by what is happening. So it is a kind of attention and gaze that people are perhaps not used to, because we are used to a very utilitarian concept of attention, which is to focus and to make some sort of conclusion.
M: Yes, a utilitarian concept and perhaps one that rigidly controls the gaze. As though it were important to hit a target, that probably does not even exist.
G: Right, but it is also a sort of attention or gaze that perhaps is not so ocular. It is corporal. In that sense where you talk so much about the skin – almost as if the skin were a way of looking, an organ of feeling or perceiving the world. In your work, I think, perhaps it is more this kind of gaze that takes place than the scientific, objective gaze.
M: That’s right. It is more perceptible, and I think even more sentimental.