cyborgs on instagram
the resources of nudity
hacking the system
interview by XERXES COOK
all artworks by MARÍA FORQUÉ
XERXES COOK — Have you always been an exhibitionist?
MARÍA FORQUÉ — I was always a funny, hyperactive girl. I used to record myself singing or drawing. When I was 14, suddenly I turned into a woman — literally over the course of one month. I went back to school after the summer as a super-hot woman, with really big breasts, and my lips had grown, too. My school was very strict, religious, and everyone told me to cover up and wear big, baggy clothes. I was really impacted by this change in how the world saw me. Before, I was a normal girl, and everyone treated me as such, and then suddenly I was treated as a sexual object. At first, I enjoyed it because I received a lot of attention from the boys, but soon I developed anorexia, anxiety … mental issues. I became very, very thin. I wanted to disappear.
XERXES COOK — How did you get out of it?
MARÍA FORQUÉ — A few years later, I fell in love with a crazy performance-artist who made me love my body and my breasts, as up until then I had kept them covered. He also got me involved in performance art. I started to connect with people who explored nudity in their work. I went to New York to an artists’ residency where everyone was naked. It was my first experience of a nude community. Surrounded by naked people, all in our natural state — by the third day, you didn’t care about dicks or breasts. You just cared about the person. It healed me a lot. I started to see the body again as something beautiful and not something dark.
XERXES COOK — What do you want to say with your body?
MARÍA FORQUÉ — I create live installations with the body. As I stay totally still, it’s an installation and not a performance. I work a lot with meditation and explore changes of consciousness. Being still focuses your senses. The concept is the aesthetic. It’s information for your eyes. The eye wants to be pleasured. I like to provoke eye-orgasms. It doesn’t matter if people don’t understand this at first. But to me there is always a deeper meaning.
XERXES COOK — Which of your works are you most proud of, or consider to be the most successful?
MARÍA FORQUÉ — I always instantly forget the works I have done right after I’ve done them. My favorite is the one I’m preparing now, where I’m going to cover my body, face, and hair in a suit of LED lights and suspend myself in a water tank for an hour. It’s a piece that is intended to represent the soul.
XERXES COOK — In some of your works, such as 1por1, in which you’re wearing a hyper-realistic mask of your face on top of the Gucci chain-metal bodysuit, I see a dialogue between the organic and the robotic. Is this a comment on a trans-humanist future?
MARÍA FORQUÉ — I’m a perfectionnist. I always want every detail to be perfect. A cyborg, too, loves perfection.
XERXES COOK — You hacked the Apple Store in Madrid to load up videos of your near-naked body spinning 360 degrees onto the screens of the phones, tablets, and computers displayed in-store.
MARÍA FORQUÉ — 1por1 was born to be a digital-art terrorist. Its first act was to be on every computer, iPhone, and screen in the city. It started at the Apple Store.
XERXES COOK — Why did Instagram close your account? Was it when you spent two weeks posting images in your stories of three-breasted women from popular culture, à la Total Recall?
MARÍA FORQUÉ — They clearly didn’t like the three boobs!
XERXES COOK — It seems like you’re goading these tech giants, Apple and Instagram. How did that make you feel when they got their revenge?
MARÍA FORQUÉ — At first, it brought up those same feelings I had when I was younger of being rejected by people. It’s really frustrating to spend three years making art for a platform that in a second censors my nipples and my art.
XERXES COOK — But don’t you methodically want to provoke reactions?
MARÍA FORQUÉ — I like to push limits. Nudity is the future. Becoming more comfortable around the naked body would signal a higher sensitivity and understanding of ourselves, and a possible evolution of consciousness.
XERXES COOK — What do you have planned for 2018?
MARÍA FORQUÉ — I want to make an EP of hard-core healing music and to play it at a macro-discothèque like Fabric in London wearing nothing but a thong.
END
[Table of contents]
by Kira Bunse
by Sven Schumann
by Jérôme Sans
by Olivier Zahm
by Juergen Teller
by Olivier Zahm
by Heji Shin
by Olivier Zahm
by Benedict Blink
by Pierre-Ange Carlotti
by Olivier Zahm
by John Jefferson Selve
by Olivier Zahm
by Olivier Zahm
by Olivier Zahm
by Anders Edström
by Maurizio Cattelan
by Olivier Zahm
by Xerxes Cook
by Skylar Williams
by Henrik Purienne
by Andrea Spotorno
by Olivier Zahm
by Olivier Zahm
by Alexis Dahan
by Olivier Zahm
by Olivier Zahm
by Wolfgang Tillmans
by Jérôme Sans
by Olivier Zahm
by Francois Perrin
by Sven Schumann
by Olivier Zahm
by Andrea Spotorno
by Mikael Zikos
by Sven Schumann
by Jérôme Sans
by Olivier Zahm
by Maurizio Cattelan and Marta Papini
by Olivier Zahm
by Joshua Glass
by Hayden Dunham
by Chikashi Suzuki
by Xerxes Cook
by Olivier Zahm
by Sven Schumann
by Olivier Zahm
by Olivier Zahm
by Olivier Zahm
by Olivier Zahm
by Olivier Zahm
by Olivier Zahm
by Olivier Zahm
by Maurizio Cattelan and Marta Papini
by Bill Powers
by Olivier Zahm
by Joshua Glass
by Casper Sejersen
by Olivier Zahm
by Olivier Zahm
by Olivier Zahm
by Olivier Zahm
by Olivier Zahm
by Olivier Zahm
by Olivier Zahm
by Alban Adam
by Johann Bouché-Pillon
by Jérôme Sans