Désirée de Lamarzelle: You moved to Australia at a very young age. Did living abroad have a significant influence on your work?

Sylvie Selig: I experienced Australia in the 1950s. It was still an isolated country, with no telephone service and where mail took two months to arrive. At that time, we knew nothing about Aboriginal art. Only the National Gallery in Melbourne allowed us to discover older works. Contemporary art was still in its infancy.

Was the prestigious award (Victorian Art Society) you received at age 15 a turning point?

S.S.: I had my first painting exhibition at age 17 at the Museum of Modern Art in Melbourne, but you have to put that into perspective: there was nothing else at the time. I eventually moved to London, where I wanted to study theater set design. I gave up on that idea because I wasn’t very good at schoolwork. I kept painting.

Antonin Artaud said: “No one has ever written, painted, sculpted, modeled, built, or invented anything except to escape from hell.” Is that true for you?

S.S.: It’s true, I was very unhappy when I arrived in Australia from France alone with my mother, far from my family and friends. For the only child that I was, painting was a refuge. When you’re creating, you don’t think about anything else. The world can fall apart.

Was life as a female artist easy?

S.S.: When I returned to France, I was 20 years old and faced two major obstacles: my painting was figurative in an era dominated by abstraction, and I was a woman. I had to make a living, so I did illustrations for children’s books. It was considered a minor art form in which women were allowed to exist. It was, in a way, a transitional period—the time it took to raise my son—and then I returned to painting. At that point, art took on a very important role, the most important one in my life.

You paint, sculpt, embroider; you are an extremely prolific artist...

S.S.: I’m 81 years old; I wonder subconsciously if painting these large canvases isn’t a way to prolong my life. I sometimes tell myself that I have to finish my painting before I pass away. I have a voracious appetite for work because I have so much to say: a day without working is a day wasted. I always have several works in progress. This is essential in oil painting because there’s always a drying time of about ten days. It would be too frustrating to wait without doing anything.

Your painting at the Biennale was 50 meters long. Why such large dimensions?

S.S.: Because I tell stories. They unfold continuously and are sometimes long. It amuses me to think that I could measure my works in kilometers. For example, right now, I’m painting a canvas that’s already 45 meters long and will certainly reach 80 meters. There’s a desire to move toward ever-larger formats that evoke the movie screen. I also paint on fabric (linen in particular), and beyond the transparency effect that appeals to me, the advantage is that I can roll them up more easily.

I read that your works express a repressed desire to write?

S.S.: Yes, I’ve always read a lot and I love words, preferably in English, because I find French too Cartesian in its writing. On the canvas, I like to create encounters between images and words. My world is nourished by fairy tales, particularly Alice in Wonderland, with my hares appearing very frequently in my work. Man has many facets, and I explore the metamorphoses of the human being by sometimes transposing him into an animal. But I cannot give you the meaning of my painting, because I myself do not have it.

Were your monster sculptures at the Biennale influenced by Aboriginal art, in connection with your youth spent in Australia?

S.S.: No, not at all. My monsters are very recent. They came to me all of a sudden while I was working with clay. They’re made from mannequins, papier-mâché, and various materials I happen to have on hand. You know, things just come together in the creative process, but you don’t really know why. They make up my “Weird Family,” and when someone offers to buy a sculpture, I point out that they each have their own name and that they’re all for sale together. There are 28 of them, after all!

How would you describe yourself?

S.S.: As a storyteller or an eternal seeker. The creative process is a kind of continuum where one thing leads to another.
To get back to my monsters, I don’t know how they came about, but they have nonetheless nourished my painting, and vice versa, my painting has contributed something to my monsters. Everything blends together. When I embroider on the canvas, it’s one of the many guiding threads in my creative process.

Until you posted your work on Instagram, you were unknown to the public, but also to professionals.

S.S.: It was the daughter of a friend, an artist herself, who told me that Instagram was the best showcase for art. Despite my reservations, she helped me, and she was right. I enjoyed posting. I was contacted by the Metamorphoses gallery-bookstore, where I exhibited, and then by the curators of the Lyon Biennale, who offered me this fabulous space where professionals came. This opened up extraordinary opportunities for me, with many new contacts. I received a lot of compliments from the public on Instagram, some of whom even sent me photos. It’s truly wonderful to share their emotions.

Unpopular in the 1960s, are we witnessing the return of figurative painting in contemporary art?

S.S.: Abstraction is still present, but figurative painting, after having been overshadowed by highly conceptual art, has been making a comeback for the past decade or so. I’ve been the first to benefit from it.

Which artists move you?

S.S.: I have absolute admiration for Louise Bourgeois and Paula Rego, a Portuguese artist. Unfortunately, I missed her exhibition at the Venice Biennale, where I usually go every year. Otherwise, anything can move me: nature, children, human relationships. I’m receptive to everything.

Do you sense a sense of urgency among professionals to rehabilitate female artists in 2023?

S.S.: I definitely feel it, especially when it comes to artists of a certain age. Starting with Louise Bourgeois, who wasn’t recognized until she was 70. So nothing is lost. Without the Lyon Biennale, it’s more than likely you wouldn’t be sitting here across from me right now (Laughs).

Article written by Désirée de Lamarzelle to be found in volume n°3 of Oniriq Magazine.

Translated by Bethszabee Garner