The Oracle on Buying

Here is my interview with Caterina Crepax (see previous article published 2010/01/04, Category: Art).

Patrizia:  Your father was able to create well-defined living creatures by jotting down a few lines on paper, whilst you yourself, Caterina, with a patient lacemaker's work, create containers from used sheets of paper, waiting to be inhabited (by fantasy or real people) to become living creatures, like Pirandello's characters in search of an identity...a true antithesis...is it intentional?

Caterina:  If it is an antithesis, it's certainly unintentiona!  It was never my desire to create strip cartoons,  I wouldn't have been able to invent any.  Nor did I fear a conflict, I was attracted by other forms of representation, of communication, by the idea of "three-dimensional" design, coming out of the paper and constructed as if by magic (like a pop-up book where you open a page and suddenly you see a fairy-tale castle, with rooms and stairs).  Valentina was always a presence at home, "one of the family", if one may say so. No conflicts, we each had our dreams. My own dreams consisted of staging small wonders, like a silent fairy godmother.  As I couldn't do it with words, when I was a child I used to invent and construct with my own hands little things that astonished people.  As I grew up, I continued with my passion for the "mise en scène", which was certainly something I inherited from my father (he used to do it with tables full of precious details, surprises and quotations to be discovered).  The pleasure was the joy of astonishing myself first before an object magically materialized and then sharing the amazement with others...in that brief moment, sometimes just an instant, you could feel as if you were somewhat in a dream in the company of fascinating creatures, such as fawns or insects....But going back to the antithesis, it is a fact that my clothes/bodies/body containers do not want to become fixed characters, with an unchanging identity, their names change, too.  They love to be desired and possessed by many passing souls.  They wear their secrets as if they were light, though impenetrable, suits of armor.  They are always telling different stories, they live in rooms of ancient palaces or they light up very modern urban environments.

Patrizia:  Are you a sculptor or a fashion designer?  I know my question is a bit absurd, as the diaphragm is so thin...Still, how do you see yourself?  Or are we going back to Pirandello's search of identity?

Caterina:  I have often been described, most poetically, as a "creator or paper dreams".  I don't know, talking about oneself as a creator of dreams sounds most ambitious, though, clearly, I like a definition of this kind and, if I manage to communicate some emotion, it must be a valid reason to continue proposing my work.  I definitely feel as if I am more of a paper sculptor (though my primary interest is stage decoration, objects and people in relation to and dialoguing with space) than a fashion designer or stylist...but I must admit that in the past few years I have much re-evaluated the importance of fashion as an art form.  I wouldn't mind being defined (though I don't like definitions, but think they are necessary) as an architect designing clothes as places to be inhabited by bodies!