Metamorphosis: An interview with Floria Sigismondi
The world of multi-disciplinary artist Floria Sigismondi is a surrealist dystopia. The Italian born, Canadian raised photographer and filmmaker has created a dark paradise born of a potent blend of decadent decay, dark theatrics, high fashion, seedy environments, and a subverting look at what constitutes the nature of beauty.
Whether it’s her dream-like photography, her dynamic rock video work (with artists such as David Bowie, Leonard Cohen, Marilyn Manson, and the White Stripes) or films (The Runaways), her particular and exacting vision radiates through. Drawing heavily from imagery culled from the subconscious, her phantasmagorical work revels in symbolism and meaning that can be felt if not immediately intellectually understood. It’s this genuine depth and kinetic vision backing disarming images that makes her work stand out amongst her peers (and imitators) as well as making her highly sought after imagist by a pantheon of rock’s top artists, who trust her do exactly what she wants.
Straddling the line between macabre and opulently lush, her work often contains a heavy dose of rock n roll’s dark glitter and occult charms. There is a feral, feline edge that runs through her work, even in her earlier images that evoke the despair of institutional anti-septicness. Like an exotic night bloom pushing through cracks in the concrete, Sigismondi puts her densely saturated, provocative imagery in these cold sparse spaces, infusing a jolt of life and sensuous energy in areas seemingly previously devoid of it.
Her work has several different hallmarks. She is best known for her stark, semi grotesque imagery lit theatrically in contrasting jewel tones, however she also plays with the idea of exuberant dilapidation, featuring environments falling apart in swathes of rotting walls and chaotic heaps of furniture and ephemera. Her subjects are often trussed up or restrained in some way, whether by evil looking medical contraptions or simply in layers of fantastical couture that simultaneously reveal and obliterate the body. The gross physicality of biological mass is often a subject for Sigismondi as well, with multiple themes exploring the destruction, manipulation, and modification of the body.
In fact, even in her portraits of rock stars and artists, the subject often takes a backseat to the power of the image created. The base allure of the “star” is transmuted into something else all together, an artifact in which the desirability and attractiveness of the subject is repurposed and subsumed to become a whole different kind of being.
This idea of dismantling traditional beauty and Frankenstein-ing it back together is at the heart of much of Sigismondi’s work, whether it be via physical transformation, or more recently, her exploration of internal transformation (as seen in the brilliant Sigur Ros short film “Leaning Toward Solace” written and directed by Sigismondi.) These newer works have a more airily transcendent feel that the badass hard rock cool of earlier pieces, while still conversing about what it means to be human beyond traditional expectations.
Whether in her photography, video work, or film, Sigismondi explores the idea of re-creation, and the freedom to find beauty in darkness, in the transgressive, and in the blending of the sacred and profane.
Hi-Fructose recently spoke with Sigismondi to discuss her career and inspirations.
I’ve always believed that if you look at something close enough you’ll find the beauty.”
Hi-Fructose: Your work has a very distinctive look, combining dreamily outlandish imagery combined with striking lighting. I was curious about your start, what influenced your aesthetics? You grew up in a theatrical household, how much do you think that shaped the way your art developed?
Floria Sigismondi: I think growing up in the industrial town of Hamilton Ontario, but living in a home where theatrical costumes where made at all hours of the night and lyrical opera played all day long was quite a contradiction. This dichotomy I brought into my work. The opposites are what attract me.
HF: Was your art readily accepted or did it take a while to get your career moving? Was there a moment where it really started to take off?
FS: It really started to take off when I was directing the video, Beautiful People for Marilyn Manson. It was a pivotal video for me creatively and for my career, because I came up with some pretty challenging ideas that I had always wanted to do, but could never find the perfect outlet. He would do anything so I really went for it. I remember being on set and watching my sketches come to life in front of my eyes was so transformational for me. It really changed the way I approached creativity. It made me believe that no idea is too crazy.
HF: Your work also has an element of “the beautiful grotesque.” I feel you really helped bring this aesthetic to the forefront of contemporary art, where it is now much more widely embraced. However, I feel your work has a strong rock and roll element to it (besides just having rock starts and musicians as your subject matter). Could you speak to your attraction of bringing a sense of beauty out of darker imagery?
FS: I’ve always believed that if you look at something close enough you’ll find the beauty. It could be in the color, the texture, the symbolic meaning. I find color attracts me first. There is a specific image that comes to mind of a floating human heart. The colors and texture are so rich that all I see is the beauty in the veins of the heart. The second thing my brain does is want to understanding the image. It mumbles, “ it ‘s a human heart, that used to belong to a person and where is the person now and what happened to them?” But I have already seen the beauty so that also becomes party of the experience.
I would love to see personal expression externalized. When I was growing up you had to make your own identity, your own clothing, customize things.”
HF: I was curious about your inspirations. You have a strong personal style and your work has a particular stamp individual to you on it. What sorts of things inspire you these days?
FS: Metamorphisms, transformation, the universe, dreams, aliens, emotions, love, movement, strength and contradictions.
HF: Many of your photographs and videos are with people who are famous for their own creative output. How much of what is finished is your vision? Do you collaborate with the subject (in the case of musicians who tend to have an invested interest in their “image”) or do you go in with a strict idea of what you want a finished work to look like?
FS: I pretty much know what it should look like when I purpose an idea and it never sways too much away from that in the end. I take artist to different places and that’s the fun part. We embark on something new together.
HF: You sometimes appear in your own work as a subject as well as the creator, I was curious about that…if that was meant as a way to capture more of your vision (being willing to look/act in a way maybe other subjects might not) or if it is more a form of self-portraiture?
FS: It started that way. I used myself, because it was easier to capture what I wanted, but then I wanted to tell little stories about myself that I was discovering in the process. The knowledge came from going through the experience. It takes the veil away and makes things clearer. It becomes about capturing an idea without a middle person.
HF: You have said that originally you were drawn to painting, and then you discovered photography. I was curious what about the photographic medium attracted you over painting.
FS: The immediacy of achieving the image really, how quickly you can have an image after you think it up. Painting would take me a month or two to finish, but now I use watercolor and that is something that has changed the way I approach painting. It frees me up. Sometimes I paint up to 15 watercolors in one sitting. I guess it was hard for me to think of an idea and have to work on the same image for so long. I was always running. After I’ve come up with the idea I want to move on to the next. It’s almost like the idea is more important to my growth and understanding than the finished image. But getting to the image and having experienced that brings me understanding. I think what I am trying to say that the experience of bring that image to life is how I process. If it’s a painting there is not enough action or human interaction, which is maybe what I was looking for at the time. Now I might want to spend that time and do an oil painting.
HF: You have since gone on to do music videos, short films and now full-length films. Was the change from creating static images to moving images a challenge or did it seem a natural progression for you?
FS: It felt like a natural progression. It was different in the way that now I needed many images and not just one single image to evoke a feeling, because I was playing with the element of time in space. But that’s what really intrigued me. I was drawn to the way ideas could unravel and how music works with the image to create a feeling. You can play against it or with it and have different outcomes. Music has always been an integral part of my life and if feels natural I would be drawn to that as part of the image making process.
HF: Have you created a work that you feel perfectly encapsulates your vision or is it something that is always changing?
FS: It changes from time to time. Right now I think the short film for Sigur Ros I made called, Leaning Toward Solace. The film tells the story about a young girl Sara, played by Elle Fanning, who confronts the imminent death of her father, played by John Hawkes. The story is set in the desolate landscape of an economic collapse. It’s about the fine line between keeping it together and the feeling of helplessness when life just doesn’t work any longer. But the story is not only about sorrow, but also about hope, love and the loss of fear, rebirth and reincarnation. The possibly that we may have traveled through time with the same souls in different roles. The daughter now holds her father as he begins a new life in her arms.
I was drawn to the way ideas could unravel and how music works with the image to create a feeling.
HF: You’ve also worked on beauty campaigns. In the past you have said that you were interested in new ideas of what beauty could be. I’m interested in how you see beauty vs. the mainstream culture, which tends towards very pretty and bland, or high fashion that often has a sterility (with a few exceptions) to its presentation. How would you like to see the concept of beauty and desirability expanded?
FS: I would love to see personal expression externalized. When I was growing up you had to make your own identity, your own clothing, customize things. I’d like to see a new beauty that comes from that place. It’s too easy now because everything is available to us so you don’t have to walk around in leotards for pants, which is what I used to do, but that was challenging and I put myself out into the world like that, on the bus, on the streets.
I’d like to see another movement take place. We are always regurgitating era after era. I am quite disappointed with teenagers especially after the millennium. It was a great chance to embrace a new idea of beauty, but nothing happened. We are still in love with the eighties. It’s funny; maybe nostalgia is how the human race survives the ever-challenging world around us – the economy, having families, etc. I’d like to see more rules being broken. I wear men’s underwear on the streets still and maybe that’s my little rebellion.*
This interview was originally published in Hi-Fructose Issue 34, which is sold out. Get our latest print issue by subscribing to Hi-Fructose here!
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