Belgian Artist Wim Delvoye Creates Works That Don't Hold Back, Pushing The Limits Of Art And Ethics

Wim Delvoye is shameless and defiant. In 2000, he made shit officially labeled as art. Cloaca was a bio-machine that through a system of tubes and jars filled with gastric juices, simulated a digestive system, transforming food like Belgian fries with mayonnaise into excrement, which could be vacuum-packed and purchased – an exploration of the relationship between art production and human production in a way that was indiscriminate, taking a jab at the art world and the triviality of contemporary art production. At the Louvre Museum, he juxtaposed taxidermied carpeted pigs with crystal chandeliers in Napoleon III’s majestic apartments, placed Suppo – a monumental 11-meter-tall phallic Gothic spire resembling a steel corkscrew suppository – under the museum’s glass pyramid, and displayed Tim Steiner, the man who sold his body for art, in freak show style. A living, breathing work of art with his back and arms tattooed by Delvoye, Steiner’s skin will be harvested and framed upon his death, already paid for by a collector, and can be bought and sold like a commodity in the future.

Cheeky and subversive, Delvoye thrives on making people feel uneasy although it isn’t his main goal. His works have won him his fair share of devotees as well as detractors who are uncomfortable with his non-conformist approach and showmanship. Love him or hate him, what’s certain is that he makes art that alters our ideas of beauty, constantly associating the attractive with the repulsive in work that embodies inherent contradictions where the viewer doesn’t know whether to stare, be captivated or look away. Provocative, his works may take some three years to make, criminal in today’s fast-paced art world where time is money and artists don’t have the luxury to take their time. Criticizing art production while manipulating and exploiting it at the same time, he is always willing to play the game. His website entitled “Wim City” invites viewers to enter a wonderland with a church, mosque, castle, factory, foundry, garage, farm and tattoo studio – all the art forms that populate his universe – and features an array of “art products”, including a puzzle, Wim action doll, pencil case and coloring book. He finds it important to work without secrets, to explain and make transparent acts of producing, selling and exhibiting art.

Born in Wervik, Belgium, in 1965, Delvoye grew up in museums as a child, where he discovered artists like Bosch, Brueghel, Duchamp and Warhol. At times a schoolboy up to mischief, at times philosophic, he believes that art should entertain yet his work isn’t about telling jokes – viewers must read between the lines. He is the kind of artist who follows an idea through to its completion even if it stirs up controversy. With Art Farm, he bought a pig farm in a Chinese village near Beijing, sedated the pigs, tattooed them with hearts and skulls, Snow White, the Louis Vuitton monogram and religious images, and kept them until they died of old age before removing their hides and handing them over to collectors who had already purchased them. It was his way of questioning the commodification of artworks in a globalised context, a way of speculating as the pigs gained in value over time. He tattooed small drawings on young pigs, then waited for them to grow to harvest large drawings, as it was only after their deaths that they became artworks.

Nonetheless, it isn’t the first time that Delvoye has tackled cultural iconography: he signs his name in Disney characters, has transformed the famous Warner Bros. logo into his own initials “WD”, owns the largest collection of Laughing Cow processed cheese boxes and labels, has taken on the appearance of KFC’s Colonel Sanders and his coat of arms depicts himself as Procter & Gamble ’s Mr. Clean in a kind of commentary on how consumers are bombarded daily by brands, logos, images and messages.

Delvoye has always had the ability to shock people. At arts school in Ghent, he learnt that showing skilful work incorporating traditional crafts was a no-no in the art world – it was viewed as kitschy and relegated you to the status of a “lowly” craftsman. But that didn’t deter him. Debuting his career in the late ’80s, his early works with carpet weaving and tapestry perturbed people because it infringed on the sphere of the traditional arts and artisanship. Today, his works continue to show off artisanal skills: weaving, tattooing, carving, embossing, stained glass-making and steel-working. Though nudity as subject matter was fashionable in the art world when he was at school, he didn’t think much of it. Sex just isn’t as interesting as religion, shit, the market or the economy, which are actually much more taboo.

His ornate, filigreed and laser-cut Cor-ten steel and stainless steel Gothic cathedral trucks displayed expert craftsmanship. Though an immensely popular series, he isn’t one to rest on his laurels and feels the need to move on, although the conservative art market would want him to continue this work, repeatedly producing the same things for collectors. However, he doesn’t want to be the artist making variations on the same theme for the rest of his life, believing it’s imperative to be flexible and wanting his work to evolve. Thus, his eclectic oeuvre exposes a wide range of themes. Enjoying working on many projects at once, he mixes genres, categories and periods. By referencing the past, appropriating art history and deforming existing motifs that influence him, he gives a unique take on contemporary society. His work spreads out like a fan, moving in all directions simultaneously and incorporating new techniques and ways of working. He wants to free himself from the art market while reaching the maximum number of people.

We caught up in Paris at the opening of his solo show that ended last October at Galerie Perrotin, where Delvoye presented Suppo (Karmanyaka),a giant mediaeval-style marble tower twisting upwards from a tree’s roots, car tires that have been twisted into knots resembling serpents or hand-carved into a kind of rubber lace, aluminum Rimowa suitcases embossed with Persian motifs and nickeled bronze figures of Jesus on the cross cast as a double helix. Currently, Delvoye is busy expanding on his embossed luggage series in Iran and carved tires in China. Chatty, expressive and extremely friendly, he spoke candidly about the state of European politics, his enormous affinity with Asia, having worked in China, the Philippines and Indonesia, Ai Wei Wei – one of his best artist friends even though they disagree about China – and contemporary art.

You’re exhibiting once again in Paris. What are your thoughts on Europe?

In Paris, you’re constantly in danger. You never know what’s going to happen. There is justice and law and order, but here you see graffiti and it’s dirty. The French don’t like Dubai. They say it’s too much of a plastic world. But there’s nothing wrong with the plastic world. Give me the plastic world. I really like Singapore for that reason. I’ve been speaking with the government about living there. They say I’m welcome. I’m now a resident of Brighton, England, to be a bit away from the European community because here they only want to make war and tax people. It’s a very bad situation here. The Happiness Index is very low. The birth rate is high from immigration, but the people who immigrate to France are not going to make a major contribution to the economy. The government is basically begging people to ask for money. If you’re not asking for money, you’re a suspect. You must be a criminal because you’re not asking for money from the big nanny state that knows better. They think for the people. People are not allowed to think themselves. They say Europe is a good project, the Euro is a good currency and Putin is a bad man every day in the newspaper. And we think we are the free world. We are not a free world. I think Singapore is a much freer world. Belgium is the Italy of northern Europe. It’s a very corrupt country. The government says you should work with this company and I think no, I’ll work with this other company because it is better and cheaper. My country thinks of itself as freer than Singapore and is very happy to make Singapore look bad. So I grew up with these lies. It’s a big job for an artist to see through the lies, to select lie from truth, and every day you have to do this job, about Russia, Syria, Iraq, Singapore and China – we have to read between the lines because our newspapers are not so free. You cannot have a society without laws. You cannot have the situation like here in France where you can do whatever you like and you know you won’t go to jail.

How did you become an artist?

My parents were very art-minded. Every weekend, we went to visit museums and historical places. And my father was always drawing. He decided that I should go to art school because he didn’t get a chance to. I enjoyed art school but I was much busier preparing my future. For me, school was not an end in itself. A lot of people, when they go to school, they want to get points. I didn’t want to have points. Now when I employ people, I don’t want to know what they studied. They just go on the computer and show me what they can do. I don’t believe too much in the school system.

Describe your work process.

Usually we make a computer drawing, then we look for the best person. So we have creation, negotiation, delegation. I can get ideas or think about art all day while I’m doing something else like driving my car. Then, wherever I am, I can delegate through the telephone. Supervision is a big problem. But I also like the way I work, which allows me to do different things and innovate quickly. I want to see a difference every year. If you say I’m this type of craftsman or I’m a painter, then you define yourself already by a technique. I prefer to wait for an idea, then the technique will follow. It can be marble, aluminum, anything. First, you need the idea – you want to know what you want to do and why and, if you solve this, the other things are easy and fun. With my way of working, you don’t define yourself by a material but by a way of thinking and working. This allows me to be very free and to do very different things. Many people who are maybe more commercially successful cannot change their work. If they change even the size of their paintings, they’re in trouble because the market is conservative and always wants to reference the past.

How big are the teams you work with?

They’re small teams but many of them, depending on the projects. Some can be three or four. The tires are seven or eight people. For the marble piece, the artisans are from Italy. The tires are carved in China. I look for the best people wherever they are. I went to Isfahan in Iran because they are the best in embossing, so I go wherever the best are. Making these suitcases in Iran could take six months, but it could be nine months, as transport could be a few weeks or months depending on the geopolitical situation. I use other people because they’re better than me in a certain craft, not because it saves me time.

How do you see beyond the critiques and follow through on your ideas?

I like when something is difficult; I get more excited. By tattooing pigs, if I get into trouble with animal rights activists, I think it’s more interesting. It adds another layer to the thing. For example, why would they not be happy? Why can you kill to eat and you cannot kill for art? They say, “You can kill it to eat, not for art.” It’s like a war on utilitarianism. Everything has to be necessary. Basically they have a problem with art. You should not tattoo a pig if you’re not hungry. As soon as you’re not hungry, you think of art. It’s a human activity that you cannot completely justify, so these people play a theatrical role, but they’re basically trying to work out answers for something more general about art, something deeper than their concerns. When they attack me, it’s to be in the limelight because otherwise they can go to a slaughterhouse and stand there and protest. A slaughterhouse kills around 400 cows or 1,000 pigs per day and nobody is there protesting. If I tattoo 10 pigs a year, they love to protest. But what’s interesting is that by doing this, they automatically add to the discussion about art. Is art necessary? Is art good if it’s not necessary and what happens with something that’s not necessary?

Is your work less accepted in the West or in the East?

In the West because there’s an enormous freedom in the East now, with the “why not” attitude. People just don’t have discussions about what is art or not. They’re just open-minded, they’re there, they enjoy things and they’re not so into the taxonomy of things. I think it’s much fresher, freer and open-minded than in Europe where people here are stuck with old ideas. They’re fossilized, petrified and cannot have a new idea anymore. Some people are finished, other people will take their place – it’s the nature of things. I don’t think Europeans are going to tell a great story this century. And I hope I will one day be accepted as an Asian artist.

You’re good friends with Ai Wei Wei. What do you think of his situation in China?

I’m jealous. I would like to have his government because his government is better than mine. So one, I’m jealous that he is living in a better country with a not so violent government in comparison with my country and my government. Secondly, when he has problems with his government, the whole world defends him. When I have problems with my government, nobody helps me. Why? Because they’re using him for propaganda: look at China, how terrible it is there. But it’s not terrible in China. People do whatever they like. They are free to enterprise, to work and to build up their lives the way they want. This is impossible to say about countries in Europe. If I say to the press, “I’m Ai Wei Wei, please help me”, nobody wants to devote one letter to my political problems. So does Ai Wei Wei have political problems? No. It’s a big theatre because if I don’t pay my taxes, it would be four years instead of four months and nobody would visit me in jail. When Ai Wei Wei goes to jail for four months – this is terrible because I like him a lot and don’t want him to suffer – every European journalist defends him, and these journalists know very well that it’s worse in Europe than in China. They are not serving Ai Wei Wei’s purpose. I presume Ai Wei Wei is not doing this to become famous but because he really means well for his country. But what he is saying about his country is a bit unreasonable in comparison with all other countries because if you try to build a studio in New York without building permits – like he did in Shanghai – of course you would have problems. So I like him a lot as a human being and have learnt a lot from him, but I wish journalists would be a bit more intelligent.

What do you want the viewer to take away from your art?

In 1977, I was 12 years old and I went to see a Rubens show in Antwerp. After four hours, my parents begged me, “Please, can we go?” I was not finished. I hope I can do shows like that. Some shows when I was 10, 11 or 12 years old influenced me a lot and, later in school, some artists or movements made an impression on me, which was very important, otherwise I would not have continued to study. If I hear the same thing, I would be very happy that I stimulated people to pick up the brush or the pencil because I was going to stop when I was a student. Then, all of a sudden, the teachers talked about Dadaism and I thought no, let’s continue to study, so I got engaged just in time. A lot of art doesn’t engage you.

What are your views on the contemporary art world?

The art world is a very dirty house and I feel like I’m Mr. Clean coming in sometimes. This is one reason why I like Mr. Clean. The second is it’s not Mr. Clean. I’ve made him very dirty, transforming his legs into his bowels. I also like that he’s a global brand that you cannot avoid. Wherever you go, you see Mr. Clean smiling at you. So I like the daily reality of Mr. Clean. The art world is like a religion, so I have to change my views every day, but my interests are very broad. My views are a bit different from most people, a bit sicker. They say I have a twisted mind, but I feel I have a free mind. I’m not very afraid. I want to make fearless art. Most artists are afraid. You have to overcome your fears.

Wim Delvoye currently has a solo exhibition at the Heydar Aliyev Center in Baku, Azerbaijan, until September 27, 2015, and a group show as part of Glasstress 2015 / Gotika organized by The State Hermitage Museum and Berengo Studio at the Instituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere e Arti at Palazzo Cavalli Franchetti in Venice, Italy, until November 22, 2015.