Drawing Room Confessions #10: Alexander da Cunha

Made of words and exchanges, with no images, "Drawing Room Confesstions" is open to diverse practices and voices.

It is named after a game played at the end of the nineteenth century in England and France, which consisted of a fixed questionnaire answered by players to reveal their tastes, aspirations and personalities. For every issue of the journal, we invite one artist to play the serious and playful game of conversation. Each section follows a set of rules, only the players change, as interviewers from fa wide range of fields contribute to a portrait of the artist at a certain time.

(...) I love it when people ask, “What kind of art do you make?” and I answer, “Sculpture”. The first thing everyone thinks is that sculpture is associated with someone who sculpts. There is the idea of a classic sculptor, someone who transforms materials. I transform almost nothing, but there is always the intention to transform. I basically bring existing things together and make people look at them in another way. Maybe through association, as you mentioned, or maybe by giving them a character, a personality, as if they really were characters, individuals, almost like people. I think my work is almost always figurative, and this is the greatest transformation. At least this is the biggest aspiration I have for a work: trying to transform an ordinary glass that everyone uses into a glass that becomes a character (...)

Language: English