Self-proclaimed “painter, sculptor, performer, who is constantly anxious yet fascinated by being ‘there’ without any understanding…” Olivier de Sagazan is a philosophical artist who takes his inspiration from Africa, where he was born, staging performances of terrifying dances which reflect his constant preoccupation with the meaning of life. AMA spoke to him and delved into the worrying world of this astonishing artist.

Can you present your career to us briefly? 
After my MA in biology, I had the chance to go to Cameroon for two years. These years really saved me, allowing me to take a step back and return to my roots: Africa, where I was born. Just before I left, I discovered, by looking at a Rembrandt painting, another amazing way of questioning life. Coming back, I spent a year locked up working on a comic strip, Ipsul ou la rupture du cercle, and then I immersed myself in painting and sculpture. Performance was something I worked on later, as a realisation of the desire that I always felt while painting, to leave my body’s mark on the canvas. Then came the moment when I decided to go ‘underneath’ my painting. To become a living canvas. It’s this journey that inspired me to start performing, at first just in private, in my workshop, and then in public.

In the performance Transfiguration, we can see several influences: Tribal art, shamanism, as if you were searching for an ‘original’ form of communication…
Yes, I’m very influenced by Tribal art, by the relationship between the earth and the elements, in the way that they both go beyond langage, and that they are both a sort of ‘bodily creation’.

In Transfiguration, a performance based on a skull which was modelled over in earth and mud, there was the idea of giving back ‘speech’ to the hands, by covering the face. This work, which I did without using my vision, links to numerous initiation rituals in which the shaman puts someone in a trance, when they become a almost blind, an unconscious entity, a medium through which the living and spirit world can communicate.

This ‘blind’ work allows room for chance and improvisation, which is key to getting off the beaten track and specifically for this piece, to creating never-seen-before masks.

You can see Sagazan at ticket link