Franki Domino — The Art of Imagined Memories

perspectives

An Evening That Never Was With Franki Domino

interview + written AMANDA MORTENSON

Franki Domino emerged when Julien Pacaud’s long-established collage practice began opening into a much wider field of image-making. After more than two decades of working with found photographs and digital composition, generative AI introduced a new rhythm, a new volume of possibilities and a freedom that no longer fit comfortably within the visual language people already associated with his name. Franki Domino became the space in which those experiments could develop without having to explain themselves too early, allowing styles, atmospheres and references to shift until something coherent began to appear.

Evening Avant grew from that process of looking, selecting and recognising. The series was never planned around a fixed narrative, yet its images gradually began to share the same light, the same restraint and the same uncertain sense of time. Roads, cars, buildings and clothes carry traces of the twentieth century, though no single decade fully contains them. Evening settles over each scene without ever becoming night, leaving the characters suspended in moments that feel incomplete. Some are waiting, some are watching, some seem to have arrived too early or remained too long, and the spaces around them hold the quiet tension of a story that has not yet declared itself.

That atmosphere is closely tied to the way Domino understands visual memory, he describes his influences as a kind of magma made from films, books, music, photographs, conversations and everything else absorbed over time. These references return without preserving their original form, passing through instinct until they become part of a world that feels familiar without offering a clear point of recognition. The same is true of the solitude that runs through the series. It was never introduced as a subject, yet it appears repeatedly in the distance between figures, in the architecture around them and in the silence that seems to continue beyond the edge of the frame.

Generative AI gives Domino access to an enormous field of images, though the work begins through his decisions about what deserves to remain. Images may appear quickly, but the world of Evening Avant is built through the slower act of choosing which possibilities belong together. What finally emerges feels neither retrieved from a specific past nor projected toward a defined future. It exists in a parallel time of its own, close enough to memory to feel known and distant enough to resist explanation.


Franki Domino, Evening Avant
/ courtesy Franki Domino

Franki Domino, Evening Avant
/ courtesy Franki Domino

Amanda Mortenson
Who is Franki Domino to Julien Pacaud?

Franki Domino
Franki Domino was born for practical rather than conceptual reasons. I’ve worked as an illustrator and collage artist for more than twenty years, and people know me through a very specific visual language. When AI entered my practice, I suddenly found myself exploring many different aesthetics. My agent suggested creating a separate identity so there would be no confusion between my long-established collage work and these new experiments. Franki Domino isn’t another person. It’s simply the name under which I can freely explore everything AI makes possible.

Once Franki Domino found that freedom, how did Evening Avant begin to take shape?

There wasn’t a plan. That’s true of almost everything I make. I rarely begin with a fully formed concept. I let the work reveal itself as I go. With AI, generating images is easy. Choosing between them is where the work really begins. Evening wasn’t an idea I started with. It gradually emerged through that process of selection. More than the evening itself, I was drawn to an in-between state, a moment that’s difficult to define, where daylight hasn’t completely disappeared. I’m always trying to create places that remain slightly elusive.

Does the uncertainty of Evening Avant extend to time itself, and do you see the series as belonging to the past, the present or the future?

I’ve never been interested in placing my images within one clearly defined period. I’m naturally attracted to twentieth-century imagery, especially from the 1920s through to the 1980s. Those references have always been part of my visual vocabulary. But I’m not interested in recreating a particular decade. I prefer images that seem to exist outside historical certainty. I sometimes describe them as “perpendicular dreams” — parallel realities that briefly intersect with our own. I like worlds where you can’t quite say where they are or when they exist. That ambiguity is essential to me.

If Evening Avant doesn't belong to one particular time, why can an image of something that never happened still feel like a memory?

I’m not sure “memory” is the right word. Every viewer brings something different to an image, which is why I’m always reluctant to explain my work too much. I don’t want to tell people what they should see or feel. What interests me is whether an image can awaken something that already exists inside us. Sometimes that’s a memory. Sometimes it’s simply an emotion or an intuition we’ve never been able to put into words. For me, what matters isn’t whether an image is true or fictional. What matters is what it sets in motion.

What are your characters waiting for?

That’s exactly the kind of question I prefer to leave unanswered. I don’t believe there’s a single explanation, and I wouldn’t want to impose one if there were. If I answered today, it would only reflect how I feel today. Tomorrow, my answer might be different. I think mystery is part of the artwork itself. Once the image exists, it also belongs to the viewer, and I’m happy if someone sees something completely different from what I see.

Many of those characters seem to exist in their own worlds. What role does solitude play in Evening Avant?

Looking back, I realise solitude has always been present in my work, long before AI. It wasn’t a conscious decision while making this series. I never said to myself, “I’m going to make images about loneliness.” Those things emerge on their own. That’s true of many recurring themes in my work. They return because they’re part of me, not because I’ve planned them.

Franki Domino, Evening Avant
/ courtesy Franki Domino

Does that sense of solitude also shape the ambiguity in your images?

I’m not even sure I would call it unease. Some viewers may experience it that way, but that’s their reading, not my intention. What attracts me is uncertainty. Images become more interesting when they resist clear definition and leave room for doubt. I don’t consciously try to create discomfort. Through the process of choosing images, I’m simply drawn to those that contain a certain strangeness or ambiguity.

You have described your inspiration as a “magma” made from everything you have seen, read, heard and experienced. Which parts of that mental archive surfaced most clearly while creating Evening Avant?

I think that’s true of artistic creation in general. Every artist carries a mental archive made up of films, books, music, photographs, conversations and everything else they’ve absorbed throughout their life. Those references don’t remain separate. They melt together and eventually come back out in a form that’s unique to each person. In some ways, I think AI works similarly. It isn’t so different from the way artists have always worked, absorbing influences, transforming them and combining them into something personal. For Evening Avant, there wasn’t one dominant reference. What gradually emerged was a shared atmosphere, a certain light, a palette and a rhythm that simply felt right.

How does AI become part of that creative process?

For me, AI isn’t interesting because it can produce images quickly. It’s interesting because it opens an extraordinary number of possible directions. It allows me to explore visual territories that I couldn’t easily reach before. But that freedom also makes artistic judgement more important than ever. Working with AI is largely a process of selection. In a way, it turns the artist into an art director. Marcel Duchamp famously suggested that art is also a matter of choice, and I think that’s especially true here. AI constantly offers possibilities. The artwork is defined by the paths you choose to follow, and even more by the countless ones you decide to abandon.

Does the machine help you recover images that already existed somewhere in your imagination, or does it give you memories you never had?

I don’t think AI gives me memories I never had. What it can do is help me reach certain unconscious or intuitive places more quickly. Because it allows such a wide exploration of possibilities, it sometimes reveals something that was already there but hadn’t yet taken shape. It doesn’t invent those inner images. It simply makes them easier to discover.

Franki Domino, Evening Avant
/ courtesy Franki Domino

Franki Domino, Evening Avant
/ courtesy Franki Domino

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all art works (incl. header) courtesy Franki Domino

Russell Young — Inside Marilyn 100

perspectives

Russell Young Knows Why Marilyn Still Won’t Die

interview + written JONATHAN BERGSTRÖM

British-American artist Russell Young, through his large-scale silk screen paintings, is best known for his explorations of the nature of fame and cultural mythology. After beginning his career photographing musicians including George Michael, The Smiths, and Bruce Springsteen, and later directing over 100 music videos during the height of MTV, Young has since developed a visual practice centered around the icons and images that define popular culture.

His latest series, MARILYN 100, celebrates the centennial of Marilyn Monroe through a yearlong program of exhibitions and new works created in collaboration with the Marilyn Monroe Estate and Authentic Brands Group. Given access to the Estate’s archives, Young revisits one of the most photographed figures in history through his signature hand-pulled (and often diamond-dusted) silk screens, exploring the person behind the myth and the lasting power of image that continues to remain relevant across generations.

In this new interview with LE MILE, Young discusses his lifelong fascination with Marilyn Monroe, the influence of Andy Warhol, his years photographing cultural icons, and how ideas of fame, memory, and personal history continue to shape his work.

Russell Young, MARILYN 100
/ courtesy Taglialatella Galleries

Russell Young
/ courtesy Taglialatella Galleries

Jonathan Bergström
MARILYN 100 marks the centennial of one of the most photographed and mythologized figures in modern history. How did you approach such an iconic figure through your own perspective?

Russell Young
What’s fascinating about Marilyn is that everyone already has their own relationship with her. I think Picasso and Warhol really understood the power of repetition. For a while, I moved away from that idea, but eventually I started to understand how repeating an image creates a different relationship between the artwork and the viewer. That was something I explored with Marilyn. I wasn’t trying to reinvent her. I was interested in finding the essence of what makes her image continue to resonate.

Marilyn has often existed somewhere between a real person and a collective dream. Who is she to you, and what does she symbolize in your work?

Marilyn has always been in my life. I discovered her when I was growing up in the north of England. The world around me then was very grey and tough. My father understood that I was artistic and introduced me to films, museums, and culture. Through that, I found Marilyn. She symbolized escapism to me. She represented something completely different from the environment I was growing up in. For me, because I never met her and never lived in the same period as her, she exists almost as a myth. But there was also a real person behind that mythology.

I think people forget how forward-thinking she was. She understood the industry she was in and she pushed back against it by starting her own production company. Marilyn represents both things to me: the dream and the reality. Beauty and glamour but also strength and independence. I think time creates icons, and Marilyn has become bigger than herself.

For MARILYN 100, you are given access to the Marilyn Monroe Estate archives. What was the experience of going through those materials like?

It was incredible. I thought that I'd seen almost every photograph of Marilyn, but suddenly I was discovering images I had never come across before. What fascinated me was the intimacy behind some of those photographs. I met photographer Sam Shaw’s granddaughter and we talked about his images of Marilyn in Central Park. I asked her how he captured such a personal connection. She told me Sam didn’t drive, and when he was working in Hollywood, someone at the studio asked Marilyn if she could drive him to the set each day. That’s how their friendship started. As a photographer, I’ve looked at thousands of images, and you can see when there is a real connection between the photographer and the subject. You recognize those magic moments.

At first, I focused more on Marilyn as the icon, the mythology, but going through these archives made me want to explore the more personal side of her as well.

You’ve spent much of your career exploring cultural icons and the complexities behind fame. What is it about Marilyn’s image and legacy that continues to fascinate you?

I’m fascinated by why certain people rise to the surface and become something larger. Sometimes it’s talent, sometimes charisma, sometimes timing or luck. Marilyn had that rare quality. The more artists interpret her, the stronger the mythology becomes. Marilyn keeps changing because every generation finds something new in her. That’s what fascinates me, how someone who is no longer alive can still feel so present.

Andy Warhol transformed Marilyn into one of the defining images of the 20th century, and you now work with a printing press once used by Warhol himself. What does that connection mean to you?

Seeing Warhol’s Marilyn images probably made me fall even more in love with her. His colors and repetition added another layer of mystery. Working with materials connected to that history is very special. The printmaking press we use was used by Warhol, and I have some of his old screens as well. I never say which ones I use, but I like knowing that the history and energy of those objects continue into new work.

Before becoming known as a visual artist, you photographed musicians and cultural figures like George Michael, The Smiths, and Bruce Springsteen. How did those years behind the camera influence your understanding of fame as a concept?

Being around those people taught me that some individuals have something different. There is an aura around certain people. A presence. It’s hard to explain because sometimes it appears and disappears, but there is something that makes them resonate.

I photographed many talented people who history forgot because they didn’t have that extra quality or the right moment. That has always interested me, why some people become part of culture forever and others don’t.

Russell Young
arilyn Crying small Diamond, Earth Blue, 2024
acrylic, oil-based ink and diamond dust hand-pulled screen print on linen
28 × 21 inches
/ courtesy Russell Young

Throughout your career, you’ve revisited some of the most recognizable images in popular culture. What responsibility comes with reimagining images that hold so much cultural significance?

Sometimes I feel like I’m a keeper of these images. I work incredibly hard to find the right photographs and get them right. The lengths I go through can be crazy.
But at the same time, it’s still my interpretation. Even words can be misunderstood and images are even more open to interpretation. Sometimes I create something and someone sees it completely differently, but I think that’s up to the viewer. They decide what it means to them.

Your own story has been shaped by questions of identity, memory, and personal history. Has creating work around cultural icons ever become a way of understanding yourself?

I think everything you create contains parts of yourself. I was adopted and I moved around a lot as a child, so I think I was always searching and looking at the world differently. The people and images I’m drawn to—Marilyn, musicians, rebels, outsiders—there’s usually something about them that connects with me personally. I’ve always been interested in people who stand apart or challenge expectations.

Much of your process is intensely physical, from hand-pulled silk screens to experimenting with unconventional materials. What does that physical connection to the artwork bring to your creative process?

That physicality is everything. When I’m in my studio, there are no phones, no computers, no distractions. I just have an old record player, and I completely disappear into the work. Hours go by without me realizing. That’s where the magic happens, when you lose yourself. The process is physical, but it’s also emotional.

After I became seriously ill with the H1N1 virus in 2010, that physical connection became even more important. I was in a coma and I had to rebuild myself. Coming back into the studio, pulling screens and making work with my hands helped me regain that strength. There was a moment where I thought, “Okay, I’m back.” I think that experience changed the way I approach everything. I stopped worrying as much about what other people think and focused on creating what feels true to me.

You’ve often worked with images connected to nostalgia, old Hollywood, counterculture, and the American West. Are you interested in preserving these myths or challenging them?

I think it’s both. I’m interested in preserving the power of these images, but also bringing my own perspective to them. I’ve always been drawn to cultural moments and people who represent something larger like Muhammad Ali, Marilyn Monroe, the Sex Pistols, the American West. They become symbols, but everyone sees those symbols differently.

Looking back from your early series Pig Portraits to your current Marilyn series, has your relationship with celebrity culture changed? If so, how?

I think it has changed, but the world has probably changed more than I have. The obsession with celebrity today is on another level. We have access to everything and everyone all the time, but I still believe real icons will exist. There are still ridiculously talented people in the world. The difference is that icons are created over time, history decides who lasts. People like Marilyn, John Lennon, and Warhol continue to live on because every generation discovers them again.

Russell Young, MARILYN 100
/ courtesy Taglialatella Galleries

Russell Young, MARILYN 100
/ courtesy Taglialatella Galleries

WAVVYBOI — About Finding Beauty in the Dark

wavvyboi Believes Darkness Tells the Truth

interview + written KLAAS HAMMER

Some artists write songs; wavvyboi builds entire worlds. Blending alternative rock, gothic romance, and unapologetic emotional honesty, the rising artist has created a universe where vulnerability and theatricality coexist. From vampire-inspired symbolism to the intimate connection with his online community, every visual and every lyric feels like part of a larger narrative. In conversation with LE MILE, wavvyboi opens up about identity, transformation, digital intimacy, and why darkness can be one of the most beautiful ways to tell the truth.

wavvyboi wears top by ROKH, jacket by HAN KJØBENHAVN, and pants by HELMUT LANG

wavvyboi wears a total look by MARKE

Klaas Hammer
Your music and visual world feel deeply connected — where did the “vampire” aesthetic come from, and what does it represent for you personally?

wavvyboi
I think the vampire thing started less as a conscious aesthetic decision and more as a feeling that I kept coming back to. Ever since I was a child I've always been drawn to those kinds of movies and books, the dark, romantic and dramatic stories where beauty and danger exist in the same place. There is something about vampires that feels very lonely, theatrical and wounded but also powerful so I’m very fascinated by those dualities and I see myself constantly going through those stages in my life. Vampires are the perfect metaphor for feeling different from the daylight version of the world and my music wants to give those feelings a place to exist. The world of wavvyboi is all about being sensitive but intense, soft but dangerous on stage, full of glam but always honest. My wish is to turn loneliness and grief into something beautiful and in a way, that’s exactly what vampires do.

Who has inspired you the most throughout your musical journey — not only musically, but also in terms of attitude, fashion, or storytelling?

’ve always been inspired by artists who build entire worlds around themselves. My dad introduced me to so many great rockstars when I was young, from Jimi Hendrix to David Bowie, Placebo and My Chemical Romance. David Bowie has definitely been a huge inspiration for me because he made transformation feel like an art form. He showed that being different, theatrical and constantly changing can be powerful instead of something you need to hide. Brian Molko also helped me feel seen as a queer person at a very young age, and Kurt Cobain made me want to practise my instruments more and understand how storytelling can live inside music. Nick Cave probably influenced my attitude a little too much, haha.

When I started playing with my band as a teenager, I was already obsessed with the whole world around music, fashion and art. Everyone needed the right outfits, the pictures had to look right, the lights had to feel right, I was annoying everyone around me because everything had to be connected. That is just how my brain works.
Also very important: While other people were out hanging with friends, I was at home studying music videos, interviews and Wikipedia pages of artists I loved. I think every one of those artists gave me another piece of the puzzle that eventually became wavvyboi.

wavvyboi wears shirt by DSQUARED2, pants by MILK OF LIME, FASHION ARCHIVE shoes, and sunglasses by BALENCIAGA

A lot of your fans connect with the emotional atmosphere of your music online, especially on TikTok. How do you experience the relationship between your digital community and your artistic identity?

I think my digital community has become a very important part of my universe over the last few years, and I’m very happy about that because it is something I always wished for when I was younger. I want my world to give a voice to people who maybe don’t feel like they have one, and I want them to feel seen inside this community. I give them a piece of my emotional world, and they give it back to me with their own meaning attached to it. That exchange makes the music feel so much more alive.
Of course, I also had to learn that having an online community comes with impact and responsibility. The things you share can really affect people, so there is always a double-edged sword when it comes to art and social media and my screen time is sadly not the best (there are too many good edits out there).

But there is always something beautiful happening in our community: A few weeks ago, I noticed someone creating an animatic for my latest single “wanderlust,” and it completely blew my mind. We loved it so much that we decided to hire her to create a full lyric video for the song. Moments like that are amazing to me, because it means the music is inspiring other people to create their own art too. I like to call myself a digital vampire sometimes.

Your sound moves between vulnerability and (soft) darkness. Do you consciously try to balance emotional honesty with creating a mysterious persona?

I love that thought but I don’t think I consciously try to balance those things, because for me they naturally belong together. The darkness is not there to hide my vulnerability, somehow it is there to give it all a shape.

I write about very honest feelings: grief, vulnerability, desire, loneliness, pride, being used, wanting to escape your own body sometimes. Those are very real things to me. But I don’t always want to present them in a plain or realistic way. I need a world around them. I need drama, symbols, beauty, a little bit of mystery. It’s funny I always tell the people on my Twitch streams that I should be more nonchalant but somehow I can’t be, also I’m pretty bad at playing the game "among us" because I can’t lie whenever I need to play as an imposter. Online I can be very open, silly and direct but as soon as I enter the world of my music or step on stage, something changes and I fall into a more theatrical version of myself. Sometimes it is easier to say something deeply honest when you dress it in glitter, soft-darkness and drama (at least for me).

wavvyboi wears top by AUTEL and pants by HELMUT LANG

Social media often pushes artists to constantly reveal themselves. How do you maintain mystique while still staying connected to your audience?

You really need to get a feeling for it and I’m still searching for the perfect balance but somehow it is working fine for me the way I’m doing it right now. I try to share emotions more than explanations. I don’t need to show every private part of my life for people to feel close to me but I’ve developed a feeling for which things could be interesting and important. In the end you just need to be authentic and honest that's what it's all about.

I love being connected to my audience, and I’m very grateful that we can have such a direct conversation online. But I also think artists need shadows and times where they can study to become better artists. For example, when I’m in writing sessions or working in the studio, I might share a small glimpse of the process but the deeper emotional development is something I often keep to myself until the song is ready - people will discover it later through the music and not through the short sound on Tiktok.
There is a difference between being honest and being constantly available.

If someone entered the “world of wavvyboi” for the very first time — through one song, one visual, and one feeling — what would you want them to experience?

I want them to feel every emotion they were never allowed to feel before.
The song would probably be “black glitter,” because it feels like an entrance into my world and my emotions. It is the song that finally helped me shape my music and identity. All the dramatic guitars, all the honest emotions, it feels like an answer to all the people who did not accept me over the years. It tells them that I am not ashamed of the person I am, and that is what I want people to feel when they listen to it.

Visually, I would want them to see my “wanderlust” music video or live footage from one of my shows. The “wanderlust” music video shows the fragile, haunted and emotional side of my world, while the live footage shows who I become on stage, raw, theatrical, overdramatic, but still honest. I think those two sides together explain wavvyboi quite well: the fragile emotions and the dramatic guitars.
For the feeling: you are not too much here, and you are valid the way you are. If you feel different, wounded or unable to explain your emotions, there is a place for you in this world and hopefully my music can show you that. <3

wavvyboi wears shirt and jacket by DIESEL

wavvyboi wears a total look by MARKE

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talent WAVVYBOI
photography MARIO PALUFI
photography assistant NICOLAI SAUER
styling + interview KLAAS HAMMER
hair + make up PHILIPP VERHEYEN

credits
all Images (c) LE MILE and Mario Palufi

SKYE NEWMAN — SE9 Part 2, Healing, Identity and Taking Back Power

Why Skye Newman Had to Return to SE9

interview + written KLAAS HAMMER

With SE9 Part 2, available to stream on Spotify, Skye Newman delivers her most personal work to date. Exploring identity, inherited trauma, healing and self-discovery, the project transforms deeply intimate experiences into stories that resonate far beyond her own. In conversation with LE MILE, she reflects on the making of the record, the courage it takes to embrace vulnerability, the importance of setting boundaries, and the everyday inspirations that continue to shape her creative world.

Skye Newman
/ Sony Music

Skye Newman
/ Sony Music

Klaas Hammer
"SE9 Part 2" is named after the postcode that shaped your childhood. Looking back, what are the most important lessons and experiences from SE9 that still influence the artist and woman you are today?

Skye Newman
Looking back, the most important lessons and experiences from SE9 that still influence the artist and woman I am today are probably the ones I talk about in “Vicious Cycle” and “Too Far South.” Those two, in particular, really stand out to me because they’re about taking back my power, finding more strength in myself, and facing things that I didn’t necessarily feel comfortable facing a little while back.

I think they carry really important lessons in life. It’s about trying to do our best for the next generation and making sure we become better versions of ourselves before we have children. We need to be aware of how much the way we view ourselves affects our children. And “Too Far South” is also about being selfish with your life in the best way. I think so many people don’t realize that you need to put yourself first before you can be the best version of yourself for the people you love and the ones around you.

There are so many important messages throughout the project. You can definitely hear even more by just listening and really taking in the music.

Throughout the project, you explore themes such as inherited trauma, identity and emotional survival with remarkable honesty. Was there a particular song on the record that felt especially difficult—or liberating—to write?

There were definitely a few songs on the album that felt more difficult to write, but also incredibly freeing at the same time: “Too Far South,” “Traumatised,” “Vicious Cycle,” and I think “Family Matters” is a big one. I got to process a lot of emotion and heal so much through writing this album, which was such an incredible experience. That’s why I love music so much, and I’m so happy that my music has reached people and carried the message I wanted to share: that no matter where you come from or what you’re facing in life, you can do whatever you believe in. You just have to believe in yourself to get where you want to go.

So yeah, there were definitely times when I struggled in the studio. And I think “Woman I Am,” as beautiful as the song is, was definitely a turning point in my life. It was a moment where I realized how incredible women are and how amazing it is to have that love around me, but also to acknowledge the struggles I’ve had to go through in order to truly realize that.
But yeah, it was such a beautiful experience and such an amazing thing to be able to write about, so I’m very lucky.

Skye Newman
/ Sony Music

Skye Newman
/ Sony Music

One of your greatest strengths as a songwriter is transforming deeply personal experiences into stories that feel universally relatable. As your audience continues to grow, how do you balance vulnerability with the need to protect parts of your private life?

I would definitely say this is one of the hardest parts of my job: trying to balance vulnerability with the need to protect my private life and my own personal business. It can definitely be a struggle at times. Facing a lot of these issues in such a public space can be really, really scary, and I do get people overstepping boundaries or digging too deep into things. But I think you just have to trust the process, write your music, allow yourself to heal through it, and simply not answer questions you don’t feel comfortable with.

I’ve been in interviews where certain things have been said or questions have been asked, and I’ve just thought, “I’m not comfortable with that.” And I think that’s okay. It’s important to set boundaries. It’s definitely hard sometimes because there are certain subjects you may want to talk about more, but then it becomes a domino effect—more questions, more attention, and more people trying to get too deeply into your personal life.

I think you just have to set those boundaries and be aware that people are going to pry and people are going to want to know, but that doesn’t mean you have to tell them. Just do what you’re comfortable with.

Beyond music, what currently inspires you the most—whether it’s books, films, fashion, art or everyday moments—and how do those influences find their way into your creative world?

Beyond music, so many things influence and inspire me. That goes for films, clothing, my personal style, and fashion—I love it so much! I love putting an outfit together because it expresses how I’m feeling that day or the stage of life I’m currently going through. I definitely think all of that plays a part in creating my art. I think it all builds towards creating who you are as a brand and who you are as an artist to the world. I think a lot of people connect with my style and my love for fashion, and it allows me to share a little more of my story.

I also take so much inspiration from the people around me every day and from my experiences with them. Even a small conversation with a stranger can be inspiring. There’s so much inspiration in the world if you just step outside and talk to people. It’s crazy how much you can discover, and it’s such a beautiful experience that I then get to turn into music. So yeah, I’m very, very lucky. As I said, it’s amazing—and thank you guys for always giving me inspiration.

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all images courtesy of Sony Music

VERONIKA GEORGIEVA *On Paper Surgery, Deconstruction and Memory

Ctrl + X
IT’S ABOUT THE CUT, THE WOUND AND THE IMAGE

interview + written HANNAH ROSE PRENDERGAST

Destruction isn’t more natural. Just easier.

Deconstruction, on the other hand, is Veronika Georgieva’s native language.

With her trusty scissors, she frees photographs, slides, and film from an eternity of official events. This version feels truer to how it actually happened.

Paper Surgery is a delicate operation to restore the soul; it’s also an SS 2010 ad campaign for Comme des Garçons.

Pulled from her own archive and that of complete strangers, the source material stings the same. The rest is just recovery.

No need to name the wound or explain the cut—the light will get to it. If not, a fashion magazine will.

Paper Surgery Series, Hannibal
Image courtesy of Veronika Georgieva

I Loved You For So Long. from Paper Surgery Series.
Image courtesy of Veronika Georgieva

Hannah Rose Prendergast
What’s lost when you try to replicate Paper Surgery digitally in Photoshop?

Veronika Georgieva
The imperfections in my work aren’t just visual; they’re conceptual. They challenge ideas of control. The accidental tears and unpredictable folds from physically manipulating paper are essential to the series. When you try to replicate this digitally, even with the most skilled attempts, the result feels too precise. It loses the raw touch that defines this aesthetic. And I’m just not interested in doing that. I love accidents too much.

All my works exist on the threshold between control and surprise, even for myself. Otherwise, I’d be bored by my own creativity. There’s good boredom and bad boredom—like good and bad cholesterol. I need the material to surprise me. I’m deeply annoyed when there’s no excitement of the unknown, no “accidental mistake.” I need a physical dialogue with the material, with its resistance, to feel that I’m an artist alive.

Why does deconstruction feel so natural to your creative process?

There’s absolutely no rule. But it’s important to distinguish between destruction and deconstruction. Destroying isn’t more natural—just easier. Deconstruction is harder because it’s analytical. Its goal is creation: building something new. I’d like to think creation is ultimately more natural for humans than destruction. At least, I want to believe that, even though recent years seem determined to prove the opposite.Deconstruction may look like destruction to anyone unwilling to engage with the process. People often ask, “Why did you ruin this dress?” or “Why cut up those photographs?” But I adore deconstruction. My methods break habitual perceptions of ordinary things, sometimes pushing them to the point of unrecognizability.

What are the risks of starting with a political message?

The risk isn’t politics in art, it’s politics as art’s predetermined script. The strength of art lies in interpretation. When it begins with a fixed political premise, it can end up privileging the artist’s authority over the viewer’s freedom to engage. A didactic mural about climate change, for instance, might dictate a single correct reading. But a more ambiguous work, like Anselm Kiefer’s scorched landscapes, leaves space for multiple, active interpretations.

True subversion doesn’t force the world to understand—it lets people feel and outspeak. Overtly political art can be easily co-opted. When power meets dissent, it often inoculates itself by sanitizing and selling it back. Think of Banksy’s anti-capitalist murals, auctioned off for millions. Starting with politics risks turning art into a gesture absorbed by the market as “radical chic.”

How does photography influence our collective memory and perception of truth?

Truth? What truth? Personal and collective memories are both unreliable. Photography has joined the club, thanks to Photoshop and AI. Even eyewitnesses can’t be trusted. Just look at the Rashomon effect, where the same event is recalled in contradictory ways by different people. Memories depend on identity and interests. Take the myth of George Washington cutting down the cherry tree—'I cannot tell a lie'—a story invented after his death to portray him as virtuous. Isn’t it symbolic? A story about honesty that's itself a lie.

Is there an image that becomes stronger by resisting capture?

Absolutely. Like gods or monsters left unseen in horror films, the viewer’s imagination always eclipses the reveal. But this principle extends beyond horror. Any image grows stronger by resisting fixation. The moment you try to pin it down, in a photograph, a painting, even in words, it loses its spectral charge. That’s why Resnais never showed the traumatic event in Last Year at Marienbad, and why Borges described the Aleph as “a point in space that contains all other points.” The most potent visions remain unfinished, demanding the mind’s collaboration to exist at all.

This is exactly why the hidden folds in Paper Surgery, or the dark voids built from layered slides, matter more than what’s visible. Meaning crumples into layers, interpretation becomes a dance between surface and depth. The unseen isn’t absence—it’s the image’s engine.

Page 9 from Paper Surgery Series.
Image courtesy of Veronika Georgieva

Do you see more character in fashion magazines today?

I don’t think so. It’s just a new grammar of control. To ask whether faces have “more character” implies we’ve agreed on what character is. Unpredictability? The marks of lived experience? Fashion magazines today reflect a cultural hunger for authenticity but deliver it as a product. Modern retouching tools simulate character (a freckle left intact, a wrinkle allowed to stay), but it’s a calculated rebellion—a corporate nod to realness.

Compare that to Corinne Day’s raw Polaroids of Kate Moss in the ’90s, where the awkwardness was unplanned—and therefore revolutionary. Today’s “flaws” are often focus-grouped: an illusion of imperfection.

How do you embrace conflict or tension in your work?

I’m currently working on a video installation for a ballet performance centered on barocco, a theme that deeply resonates with me. Barocco isn’t just a historical period; it’s a state of mind. It emerges when old systems fail—when something bursts beyond its frames, rupturing space, scale, and meaning. The ballet will unfold on an unconventional stage: a circular platform rotating around a massive metal cylinder. The venue, a former bread factory, offers almost no space for traditional scenery. The dancers appear like butterflies pinned to the cylinder, with no room to fly.
My idea is to deconstruct the cylinder with multi-channel video projections, puncturing it with virtual trompe l’œil corridors, expanding it through illusion. These corridors will stretch into receding depths, pulling viewers inward.

For inspiration, I revisited Last Year at Marienbad, those haunting black-and-white corridors shot in a German Rococo castle, that endless hall of mirrors. For weeks now, I’ve been losing myself in those imagined passageways. I want to go there, to see that place. Though I know reality could never match the film. Some inspiring places are better left unvisited, preserved only in the mind.

In a world where authorship is fragmented, what still truly belongs to the artist?

The process. The moment. The thrill. Love and death.
Everything belongs to the artist.
The decision to designate it as art.
The vulnerability of offering it to the world, knowing it will be rewritten, reclaimed, or erased.
The act of bravery belongs to the artist.

Page 57 from Paper Surgery Series.
Image courtesy of Veronika Georgieva

Page 55 from Paper Surgery Series.
Image courtesy of Veronika Georgieva

What image will you always return to?

Martin Kippenberger’s self-portrait. He stands with a crudely made sign around his neck, something you might expect to see on a lost child, a drunk, or an Alzheimer’s patient. Instead of a name or instructions, he scrawls: “Please, don’t send me home.” To me, it encapsulates the artist’s eternal paradox: the simultaneous search for home and flight from it—the dull comforts of the familiar. It’s desire rooted in impossibility: a lost paradise, forever out of reach, yet perpetually pursued.

A chaotic journey without a map.
The purpose of purposelessness.
Unfiltered traces of a personal destiny.
Moments of raw emotional gesture.
The coveted “mistakes.”
That time before morning arrives with its regrets and clean-ups.
The choice-free, guilt-free, unfiltered ride.

Can an image that wounds also offer healing?

I don’t know about healing, but I can tell you about the wound. In Camera Lucida, the French philosopher Roland Barthes introduces punctum—a term I adore. Punctum is an accidental detail in a photograph that “pricks” or “bruises” the viewer, creating a deeply personal, often painful resonance. As Barthes writes: “The punctum is a sting, speck, cut, little hole—it is also a cast of the dice. It wounds” me.

That’s why it remains elusive: punctum doesn’t reside in the image itself but in the collision between image and life. Barthes describes how a photograph of his mother evoked profound sorrow in him, though to others, it was just an ordinary snapshot. Punctum can’t be planned or manufactured; it arises spontaneously, unique to each observer, tethering emotion to image.

I suppose if you understand why an image reopens a wound, healing follows naturally. It lies in refusing to let pain stagnate. Like champagne, best drunk once opened, or it sours into vinegar and poisons you. As Rumi wrote: “The wound is the place where the Light enters you.”

Is there something you’ve cut that you wish you hadn’t?

Scissors are a girl’s best friend. They’ve never betrayed me. Not yet. Everything I’ve cut—and I’ve cut a lot—I’ve never regretted. When I was a young girl growing up in the Soviet Union, stores had limited clothing, and what they did have was usually ugly. But I always wanted to be stylish, so I learned to sew. I sewed everything, fromraincoats to pants, shorts to dresses, even a summer suit for my mom. I once designed and sewed an entire fashion collection.

With my architecture degree, paper models and cutting were already part of my routine. But after becoming a mother twice over, I only had time to cut. By then, I was living in New York City, surrounded by secondhand stores filled with more clothes than I’d ever dreamed of. To create unique designs that fit my figure, I cut endlessly.

Once, my dear friend Renata was shocked to learn where I’d gotten such a lovely belt. I’d started by cutting up a whole dress, but ended up trimming it down until only the belt remained—perfect for my vision.

When should you go offline?

I can tell you when not to go online: when you’re bored. Boredom is the mother of creativity—those who get bored turn to something new, something unique. It’s a huge problem, especially for kids today, who are never bored. They can fill every second with social media, immersed in the lives of others, forgetting their own. To create, you need a vacuum. Being online offers everything except a vacuum.

In his essay In Praise of Boredom, one of my favorite poets, Joseph Brodsky, frames boredom as a portal to self-awareness and existential clarity: “When hit by boredom, let yourself be crushed by it; submerge, hit bottom. In general, with things unpleasant, the rule is: the sooner you hit bottom, the faster you surface. The idea here … is to exact a full look at the worst. The reason boredom deserves such scrutiny is that it represents pure, undiluted time in all its repetitive, redundant, monotonous splendor.”

The notion of time is important for the artist. And when you’re online, time flies. The sad thing is, it flies unnoticed.

Comme des Garçons campaign. collaboration with Stephen j Shanabrook
Image courtesy of the artists & CdG