Esther Sibiude, Artist

Photo Courtesy Of Esther Sibiude

WHERE WERE YOU BORN AND RAISED AND WHERE TO DO YOU PRESENTLY LIVE?
I was born in Prades, a little town in the Pyrenees in France, and grew up in different places: Moroni,Comoros, Bonn, Germany, Paris, France, Los Angeles,U.S. and Berlin-Germany. Now I live in New York City.

WHAT’S THE BEST THING ABOUT YOUR CURRENT CITY OR HOMETOWN?
The best thing about New York is its fancy trash on the streets, I find incredible stuff for my art.

WHAT WERE YOUR ASPIRATIONS GROWING UP?
I was trying as much as possible to not think about the future. This changed at some point.

WHAT HAS BEEN A PIVOTAL MOMENT?
I remember doing a hike with my father in the Sahara desert in Sudan when I was§17years old. This was an impressive esthetic moment.

WHY ART?
Why not? It would be totally weird for me to do anything else.

WHAT’S YOUR BACKGROUND TRAINING?
After studying philosophy for a year in Paris, I wanted to go to art school which I did then in Berlin UDK for six years.

WHAT'S INTEGRAL TO THE WORK OF AN ARTIST?
Necessity is important to me.

WHAT THEMES DO YOU PURSUE?
I work more with problems than with themes. One of my problems is the impossibility to look inside yourself, so I try to find external systems that remind me of how it might look like inside.

WHAT'S YOUR CREATIVE PROCESS AND PREFERRED MEDIUM TO WORK WITH?
I usually start collecting things, stuff, ideas. They all meet in the studio. It s like a big conversation with love, dramas, fights. I often get excited about new materials I discover and experiment a lot with it. This gets very physical and intuitive. At the end, I reduce and come back to sense again, hopefully. It s a lot of fun, a lot of thinking and a lot of trouble. The medium always depends on the ideas and vice versa.

WHAT INSPIRES YOU ON A DAY TO DAY? My new husband. 10. IN WHAT CONTEXT DO YOU PLACE YOUR UPCOMING INSTALLATION, "BLACK BOX" (CURATED BY LOLITA CROS)?
BLACK BOX, is the product of me walking through the streets of New York and observing delivery trucks since a year. All the material I use for this installation is new to me because it comes from this monster I met; New York.

HOW DOES YOUR AESTHETIC TRANSLATE IN YOUR EVERYDAY LIFE
Walking, collecting stuff, observing people in the subway, eating Chinese food, going out, standing at art openings totally bored, talking to strangers, skyping with my artist friends in Germany, calling my mother in Britanny, living in Carroll Gardens, not watching TV, or if I do, being schocked by the news, going to the New Museum or Whitney when I have time.

WHAT DO YOU GET UP TO WHEN YOU’RE NOT WORKING?
I probably stay in bed then. Or play my harp. But that 's also a lot of work.

HOW DO YOU UNWIND?
I like to dance.