American born artist Margot Quan Knight creates colorful multi-body photograph works. In IF, Artazart's November 2002 show, Margot invents new digital possibilities for poetry, feminine identity and the traditional genre of portraiture. During recent years as a researcher in Fabrica, Benetton's communications research center, her skilful and unprecedented fusions of layout, photograph and performance have established Margot among Europe's young-known photograph artists. We discuss with Margot the inspired nature of her work, and surrealism theorist Andre Breton looks at Margot's sources…

–>Fabrice Monier: Your 'surrealistic' digital vision refers to:
Margot Quan Knight: Luis Bunuel + Magritte + Duane Michaels.

–>FM: The best adjective to describe the overall effect of Margot Quan Knight, 2002, is:
MQK: Organic + Fantasies

–>FM: In order to consider the complexities of Margot Quan Knight collaboration, it might be good to read/see:
MQK: Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

–>FM: Margot Quan Knight, 2002, refers most to:
MQK: Parts of Duane Michaels's Illuminated Man

–>FM: Your works in general across art media and histories?
MQK: I am using new media to create images that were not possible in the past. Painting does not carry the element of "truth" that photographic images carry. I hope my ideas will last longer than the dated technology that was used to make them.

–>FM: If your work is surrealist, it is never as perverse or explosive as surrealism proper?
MQK: In his Manifesto of Surrealism, Andre Breton defined Surrealism as "pure psychic automatism… The dictation of thought, in the absence of all control by the reason, excluding any aesthetic or moral preoccupation." According to this definition, my work is not surreal because my images are each based on careful planning and logic, with a great deal of attention paid to aesthetic results and the "moral" or message conveyed to the viewer. My images are often considered surreal because they function through juxtaposition and surprise. However, the juxtapositions are not random, but are constructed according to my reasoning.

–>FM: Some pictures are absent forms of social life that once inhabited it?
MQK: I try to show a missing social connection by showing only what is actually felt to be present. For example, in the Newspaper picture, the wife does not feel the emotional presence of her husband, so he doesn't exist in the picture. This image has been digitally manipulated in order to more truthfully describe the situation.

–>FM: Your ability to be serious and very funny in the same moment?
MQK: It just depends on whether it's you, or someone else, who stepped in the dog poop.

–>FM: What is the significance of Fantasies for you?
MQK: In my dreams I fly around, often above the lake by my house where I grew up. I don't make pictures from my dreams. My fantasies for my pictures often arrive after lunch when my blood is bloated with sugar. I sit at my desk with a pencil and paper and send my brain off on a walk, in a certain direction.

–>FM: How did you reconcile your contradictory desires?
MQK: Sometimes I can have both. For example, I like eating desserts and I like going jogging. When I can't, I make lists and try to decide what is the best choice. That sounds boring, but I really like lists.

–>FM: How you imagined your fourth personal show, as opposed to what actually ended up being included?
MQK: The show was very much what I expected, because we were all in clear communication before the show. I had visited Artazart in May 2002, so I was familiar with the space. I was only surprised by how incredibly supportive everyone was- Fabrica, the Benetton Paris office, and Artazart.

–>FM: And Then?
MQK: I stayed in Paris for 2 weeks to enjoy the Month of Photography and the Paris Photo exposition. I got stretch marks on my eyeballs.

–>FM: Where did you go from there?
MQK: Physically, I just moved to San Francisco in September 2002. I am going through a period of adjustment to life in the USA again, after living for 2 years in Italy. Artistically I am beginning a new photo project inspired by the paintings of Fernand Leger. I want to explore the disassembly of the body into floating blobs. I'm just beginning my research for the project by doing figure drawing and making paper mache body parts. I also hope to expand into fashion photography.

–>FM: How do you participate in a critical legislation of institutional politics?
MQK: By absentee ballot.

–>FM: Do you think that an artist is always a product of his context?
MQK: Yes, because context is inescapable. I used to look at my mom's medical textbooks that showed pictures of deformed bodies and medical syndromes. My dad is a surgeon and he used to watch videos of knee surgeries. Because I grew up in this context, I choose to focus my work on the human body, using the computer to do surgery.

–>FM: Are you saying that our vision has fundamentally changed?
MQK: If it has, it's entangled with everything else around us that is changing- the environment we grow in, what we eat, how we communicate, when and why we die… so of course under these circumstances our perceptions and visions are changing.


http://www.fabrica.it/if/


IF, Margot Quan Knight, 2002.
This interview was conducted by Fabrice Monier, courtesy EUPHRATE Paris.
Special thanks to Eric Dalbin and Celia Coudert.