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The works suggest that this moment of not fitting should not be seen as a temporary state to be overcome, but rather as a space for extension, reflection and appreciation. This parallels the experience of social ‘misfits’ – people who do not conform to societal norms and who remain marginal. The concept of the ‘Misfits’ series indeed arose during my first site visit to the Galleria d’Arte Moderna in Milan. While I was viewing the terrace and walking through the beautiful garden in front of the exhibition spaces, I was asked to leave by a park officer because only people with children were allowed to visit that area – an area that is visible from inside the exhibition space. While we are perhaps used to considering museums as exclusive spaces, I never expected to feel excluded while looking out of a museum. At first I was irritated, but then I realised that, for me, there was a clear separation between the experience of being inside and outside those exhibition spaces, and the relationship between them had been turned upside down. So I showed half the sculptures inside and half of them outside, meaning visitors could never experience all of them at once. I was interested in the different relationships people have with sculptures in different contexts: inside, visitors were not allowed to touch the works, while outside children would run through them, stand on them and play with them. It became a question of how these states could coexist, and how our movements and relationship with place can shift in different circumstances. A lot of contemporary art supposedly aimed at children is stubbornly monochrome, as though pushing back against the primary colours we associate with children’s toys – I’m thinking, for instance, of the austere ‘play rooms’ in Francis Alÿs’ recent show ‘Ricochets’ at London’s Barbican, which my toddler found intimidating. By contrast, your work is often defiantly fun, particularly in its colours and textures, without becoming a cliché. Is this sense of fun important? What have you learned from seeing children play with and around your work? The sculptures are not explicitly formed for children, nor do they aim to have a specific effect on children. They were more a metaphor or a supportive tool for the idea of learning and dealing with social conditions. Therefore, I did not have a pedagogical goal in selecting my colours or forms. However, I was happy, for example, when a group of children stormed the works in the public space of Galleria d’Arte Moderna after the construction fence was removed during the installation of parts of the ‘Misfits’ series. You have previously mentioned that there is a queerness in your work that many people feel uncomfortable acknowledging. How does this manifest itself in the ‘Misfits’ series? With ‘Misfits’, the feeling of frustration could arise from the visual trickery of the dispersed placing of the sculptures, which appear to fit together but do not, the disappointment of interacting with something that doesn’t function as expected, much like a child’s toy that fails to meet its intended purpose. The works suggest that this moment of not fitting should not be seen as a temporary state to be overcome, but rather as a space for extension, reflection and appreciation. This parallels the experience of social ‘misfits’ – people who do not conform to societal norms and who remain marginal. As mentioned before in the exhibition at Galleria d’Arte Moderna, I tried to extend this notion or question by playing with the spatial arrangement of the sculptures – placing them in spaces that evoke inclusion and exclusion. The use of the garden, accessible only to children and their guardians, and the placement of the sculptures outside versus inside the gallery highlight the discomfort of being excluded, further intensifying the connection between the sculptures and the experience of all who don’t fit within societal boundaries. In the Main Gallery – where touching the artworks is not permitted – works are displayed on a large platform and on a sunken table. How do you think this will affect how visitors experience the work? 2 ‘Déformation professionelle’, 2017, installation view, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis Art Monthly no. 480, October 2024 ‘Misfits’, installation view, Galleria Arte Moderne, Milan
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‘Misfits’, 2021, installation view, Marian Goodman Gallery, Paris I don’t think it will be an unfamiliar challenge for visitors to experience the works visually rather than tactilely. However, I have often found that sculpture, more so than painting, triggers the desire to touch. Fundamentally, I take this fact as a compliment. The idea of the sunken table in the main gallery will only become fully apparent when visitors reach Gallery Two at the Firehouse, where a similar table, which I’ve also designed, is available for children to make their own drawings. They are invited to add to one of my incomplete drawings, following the idea of an ‘exquisite corpse’. The platform also acts as a plinth, playing on museological conventions of displaying sculpture. How do you engage with sculpture and its history as a medium? This is a complex and far-reaching question, one I have been engaging with in my works for a long time. The plinth, with its intent of distancing and elevating the sculptural object, was renegotiated in the 1960s within Minimalism. The relationship between viewer, space and artwork was redefined. From this background, I have sought a democratic approach to presenting my works. For instance, I was invited to contribute to the Niche project at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2023 by creating temporary works for four prominent niches in the facade, each containing an empty plinth. The nearly over-determined situation with the niche and the plinth inside it challenged me to place a display structure reminiscent of window displays on, behind and in front of the plinths, giving the abstract sculptures a more independent presence while also merging sculpture and setting. There is a fascinating relationship at play there between conventions of display, institutional power, and the ways in which sculpture occupies physical space. In an Art Monthly interview in 2010 (AM335), the late sculptor Phyllida Barlow suggested that both your work and her own ‘demand this interaction with space as if there is a question being tested out as to how much ownership the work has on the space’. How did you approach this question of ownership in your collaborative 2010 show with Barlow? When I was asked by the curators of the Serpentine Gallery in 2010 with whom I wanted to share my solo exhibition, Phyllida came to mind precisely for this reason. But not because I thought at the time that we positioned our works in space in the same way, but because we located ourselves so differently within the space. I approached it from the edges – transitional spaces, corridors – while Phyllida thought about the space from the centre. So it was clear to me that when it came to how we would jointly use the Rotunda, the centre of the Serpentine Gallery, I would leave the space to Phyllida and I would use one of the two main entrances for a sculpture as if in ‘observation mode’. In that same interview, speaking in the context of the Serpentine show, Barlow discusses the relationship between usefulness and uselessness in objects, suggesting that, in subverting these categories, the sculptural object gains a power through uncertainty. The exhibition guide for ‘Jumbled Alphabet’ refers to the centrality of the ‘dis-functional’ in your work; do you feel your sculptures tread that same uncertain line between usefulness and uselessness? Art Monthly no. 480, October 2024 3

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The works suggest that this moment of not fitting should not be seen as a temporary state to be overcome, but rather as a space for extension, reflection and appreciation. This parallels the experience of social ‘misfits’ – people who do not conform to societal norms and who remain marginal.

The concept of the ‘Misfits’ series indeed arose during my first site visit to the Galleria d’Arte Moderna in Milan. While I was viewing the terrace and walking through the beautiful garden in front of the exhibition spaces, I was asked to leave by a park officer because only people with children were allowed to visit that area – an area that is visible from inside the exhibition space. While we are perhaps used to considering museums as exclusive spaces, I never expected to feel excluded while looking out of a museum. At first I was irritated, but then I realised that, for me, there was a clear separation between the experience of being inside and outside those exhibition spaces, and the relationship between them had been turned upside down.

So I showed half the sculptures inside and half of them outside, meaning visitors could never experience all of them at once. I was interested in the different relationships people have with sculptures in different contexts: inside, visitors were not allowed to touch the works, while outside children would run through them, stand on them and play with them. It became a question of how these states could coexist, and how our movements and relationship with place can shift in different circumstances. A lot of contemporary art supposedly aimed at children is stubbornly monochrome, as though pushing back against the primary colours we associate with children’s toys – I’m thinking, for instance, of the austere ‘play rooms’ in Francis Alÿs’ recent show ‘Ricochets’ at London’s Barbican, which my toddler found intimidating. By contrast, your work is often defiantly fun, particularly in its colours and textures, without becoming a cliché. Is this sense of fun important? What have you learned from seeing children play with and around your work? The sculptures are not explicitly formed for children, nor do they aim to have a specific effect on children. They were more a metaphor or a supportive tool for the idea of learning and dealing with social conditions. Therefore, I did not have a pedagogical goal in selecting my colours or forms. However, I was happy, for example, when a group of children stormed the works in the public space of Galleria d’Arte Moderna after the construction fence was removed during the installation of parts of the ‘Misfits’ series. You have previously mentioned that there is a queerness in your work that many people feel uncomfortable acknowledging. How does this manifest itself in the ‘Misfits’ series? With ‘Misfits’, the feeling of frustration could arise from the visual trickery of the dispersed placing of the sculptures, which appear to fit together but do not, the disappointment of interacting with something that doesn’t function as expected, much like a child’s toy that fails to meet its intended purpose. The works suggest that this moment of not fitting should not be seen as a temporary state to be overcome, but rather as a space for extension, reflection and appreciation. This parallels the experience of social ‘misfits’ – people who do not conform to societal norms and who remain marginal.

As mentioned before in the exhibition at Galleria d’Arte Moderna, I tried to extend this notion or question by playing with the spatial arrangement of the sculptures – placing them in spaces that evoke inclusion and exclusion. The use of the garden, accessible only to children and their guardians, and the placement of the sculptures outside versus inside the gallery highlight the discomfort of being excluded, further intensifying the connection between the sculptures and the experience of all who don’t fit within societal boundaries. In the Main Gallery – where touching the artworks is not permitted – works are displayed on a large platform and on a sunken table. How do you think this will affect how visitors experience the work?

2

‘Déformation professionelle’, 2017, installation view,

Walker Art Center, Minneapolis

Art Monthly no. 480, October 2024

‘Misfits’, installation view, Galleria Arte Moderne, Milan

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