Il Muro Pascale Marthine Tayou, 2001

Interview by Jérôme Sans and Pier Luigi Tazzi

How did your Plastic Bags project come about in the context of the Tuscan landscape?

It comes from the desire to find myself in a place in harmony with me. The other side of the city, like the vision of Tuscany, a tourist vision, an environment that is experienced like Disneyland, which on the other hand is a world of plastic, superficial. In such an environment, I’m interested in the playful side, and in Tuscany, perhaps it is the life of the people who live here, not that of the foreigners. It is its inhabitants who are foreigners like me. This city that seems open is actually a prison, and the citizens are hostages of their own environment. At first, I thought Arte all’Arte wanted to present the image of an even more beautiful Tuscany and that I had been invited to support the region's tourism policy, which I wasn’t interested in at all. On the contrary, it seemed important to me to know if there were still people living here and to offer them my plastic bags game.

How did you come to the plastic bags?

The plastic bag is a popular item that belongs to the whole world, crossing borders, something universal in its usefulness and its uselessness. The simultaneously bourgeois and proletarian function of the bag interests me because it is paradoxical. In its bourgeois function, the bag is useful for what it contains; I don’t care about the value of the contents. I want to go beyond this utilitarian function to imagine another story. We are so used to seeing it offered with every purchase that when a vendor doesn’t do it, we feel unarmed, lost, naked. It is this banal impression that interests me. I take this moment of confusion and develop it in plastic art. The proletarian aspect of the bag comes into play once it has been emptied of its contents. Poor, it is no longer useful, it has served its purpose, waiting for another moment, a bourgeois moment. It is just an object in permanent transit, moving towards other destinations. It is uselessness, the content of nothingness, nothing at the service of fullness.

So, you’re talking about emptiness?

No, because the moments of abandonment, of losing speed, are what’s interesting. The plastic bag then becomes an important actor, a kind of superstar, because it comes to question both ends of this weariness, this emptiness around power. It’s a great definition of my personality: I am a plastic bag, both full and empty at the same time. Maybe there will be some who, in front of this work, will say that they are just plastic bags. The audience will be able to attach their own bags and enlarge this huge fresco throughout the duration of the event. But that doesn't make it an interactive work, rather an unlimited project.

This wall of plastic bags creates an "unecological" landscape, vibrating and playing with the wind.

There is a certain irony. A shock is created by the contrast between the landscape of bags and the Tuscan landscape it is juxtaposed with. I am not against ecology, on the contrary. I like plastic, and I simply wanted to approach it as an experience: at first, I had no idea of the musicality it produces with the wind. Even though this work includes thousands of bags, just one would have been enough. To return to the issue of the environment, I don’t intend to develop a theoretical proposal, I prefer to stay ‘light’ and encourage the audience to reflect on their own to find their personal key to understanding. This project goes beyond my expectations. And it is this diversity that interests me. The density of the work itself would disappear if I tried to confront it, with the lightness of the project. Plastic bags aside, it's not about explaining things, but about doing them.

You chose the verticality of the landscape, of the playing field. Why?

In Cameroon, when night falls, the supermarket guards mark the boundary of the territory with a string to which plastic bags are attached. They signal a no-entry zone, a kind of "beware of the dog."

Is this the first time you’ve used this material?

I have sometimes used plastic bags, both in performances and installations, but back then I was interested in the visual effect. Today, with this work, it has become a subject of conversation, I’ve looked at it a bit more closely. It is part of my environment, an object that I could defend, propose, develop. By using it so much, I found another source of inspiration, another game.

This work also speaks of the fluidity inherent in plastic bags.

The bag is a flexible, soft object. It is a perfect athlete: it jumps, swims, flies. It’s a "no bags land". A large number of the bags used in San Gimignano come from my personal collection, which has grown over time through my travels around the world. I had never thought of using them for artistic purposes. It’s a twist of fate that they end up in a parish space in Tuscany.

Is it the sporting aspect of the bags that prompted you to choose a football field for this work?

It’s my personal sporting side, my taste for the game, that naturally led me to this choice... The bags do not dominate me. I simply try to tell a story, to transcribe my narrative starting from a reality: the bag.

“Arte all’Arte VI”, 2001