LIKE A DUET. In Conversation with Anne Imhof |

Anne Imhof: I’ve immense respect and admiration for you as an artist, and I’m very fortunate to name you my buddy! The first time we began to speak in depth about artwork was once we noticed Rashid Johnson’s present on the Guggenheim and frolicked afterwards. Such an attractive day. 

Tyler Mitchell: Yeah. That was just about a month or two after DOOM (2025) occurred, proper? Or it was fairly shut to it. I do not forget that day, and I keep in mind the day you got here to my present “Wish This Was Real” (2024) at C/O Berlin actually vividly. 

AI: Me too. 

TM:  That felt fairly weak as a result of I feel you have been experiencing my work within the bodily type for the primary time. Then I keep in mind going to your present “Wish You Were Gay” (2024) at Kunsthaus Bregenz simply the day after it opened. It was the primary time I skilled a full solo exhibition of yours and I used to be actually blown away. I had seen works in group reveals, and carried out a lot of wanting on-line however by no means a full present like that. I felt late to the occasion! Bregenz was superb for me as a result of I’m such a picture particular person. Photography and movie are my native language. So when folks described you primarily as a efficiency artist, which I assume one might say you might be, however I need to problem that somewhat bit on this dialog too, I feel that intimidated me a bit. Like, perhaps I didn’t know correctly have interaction with efficiency. But after I received to your present, it was the alternative. The work felt rapid and pressing. And I understood it straight away. So I need to ask you: after I skilled your sculptures and installations in Bregenz, it felt like I used to be watching an artist who’s extremely attuned to house. Do you concentrate on house as your major materials? It definitely feels that manner. The manner you choreograph how folks transfer via a gallery, and even block them off with crowd obstacles, actually struck me. I’m actually obsessive about that. It was an actual light-bulb second for me. 

AI: I keep in mind your present in Berlin. I used to be alone, going from work-to-work. It felt like getting into your world. I turned conscious of the intimacy you produce in photos, how limitless and huge they really feel on the similar time and the way they lengthen past the body. What stayed with me most was the intelligence of our bodies and all they carry. There’s All American Family Portrait (2018), a picture of a household with their two kids that you simply shot for Document Journal, I return to typically after I take into consideration your work. Your imaginative and prescient and the way you see household, the way you body it, and the place you place the viewer in relation to it. Time and house really feel important to each of our practices. “Wish You Were Gay” was additionally about household, about popping out as a queer particular person, about elevating a child in my younger grownup life that felt particularly weak. 

TM: I need to ask you extra about that. 

AI: It was in regards to the physique recollections. 

TM: It was in regards to the physique. 

AI: Muscle recollections! 

TM: When you stroll into the museum in Bregenz, there’s that video of you on the bottom ground. I learn it as a direct confrontation with the artist, or perhaps the artist confronting herself. Then, shifting up via the constructing, I used to be struck by how implicated I felt in what you staged. It truly made me take into consideration my very own work. My photos are me coordinating a sort of efficiency. I set an intention, I set sure variables, however I don’t totally management the result. I sense that in your follow, simply in a way more stay manner. Another phrase I stored coming again to was “world building.” There’s collaboration, in fact, however you continue to have this totally fashioned world with its personal symbols and logic. How did that develop? Is it intentional? Accidental? Rooted in childhood? 

AI: “Wish You Were Gay” was, on the nostril, a present about efficiency however constructed from objects and pictures. I first started serious about efficiency early on whereas photographing my mates. I keep in mind wanting the second to final perpetually, I actually was in love with the second, not with the picture as such. In that sense, there’s one thing comparable between us: you freeze time, and I stretch it, I attempt to make the second final. I draw from lived expertise, but in addition imagining future expertise, and compose in time and in house. You create this frozen second in time, that’s the image you are taking, which is the composition. I consider you coming to Porto to take my portrait… the rain, the low gentle, you asking me to face subsequent to the pool. That made me take into consideration how a lot of that second is deliberate, and the way a lot is about relinquishing management and letting the opposite particular person reply. With dance, I’m very conscious of how intelligence lives within the muscle mass. But there’s additionally an intelligence in how we take a look at issues, a sort of visible or psychological muscle reminiscence. The mind as a muscle. Images practice that muscle. They form how we understand, individually and collectively. And I’m curious how you concentrate on that accountability when you’re making photos. Is there a mind muscle reminiscence of society? 

TM: I completely had the feeling that I used to be inside an exhibition by an artist who needed me to really feel conscious in my physique. Most reveals the viewer waits for photos to ship that means or info, however your exhibition expertise was completely completely different. It felt participatory due to the best way you staged the objects. It actually raised my pulse simply shifting via the house. When you discuss pictures as a sort of coordinated efficiency, that also actually resonates with me. I’m at all times making an attempt to stroll that line between the acquainted and the unfamiliar; bringing the viewer to water,however not forcing them to drink. I attempt to keep away from the didactic picture. Instead, I make photos that really feel recognizable sufficient, typically tied to my childhood in Atlanta, however twisted simply sufficient to really feel barely uncanny. I consider them as “lightly staged.” I like that in-between house the place the viewer has to resolve what feels discovered or caught, and what’s truly constructed. Photography is slippery that manner. We all carry assumptions about authenticity and artifice in our collective creativeness. Especially now, when the function of the picture is already so questioned, what excites me is making pictures that don’t sit neatly in both class, however straddles the road of many issues. 

AI: I feel there’s a want in each of our practices to create from a spot the place a picture is developing however isn’t totally there but, proper? It’s nearly like a ready-made that you simply discover, and let’s say the ready-made is like an expertise. A second you acknowledge, a sliver you seize… then eager to push it additional and to present it type as a result of one thing related. That’s the place questions of pose are available in for me. What is a pose? How lengthy is it held? What does it include? If you will have a motion in time vs a pose, for instance. It’s so lovely. That compression, how a lot want and time can sit inside one picture, is what makes your pictures really feel so charged to me. 

TM: I’m looking for a gesture. There’s clearly instinct concerned. I’m serious about an image I product of two brothers. The youthful one had fallen asleep on his older brother’s chest. I didn’t {photograph} the sleep itself, however the image simply after, as he awakened, when there was this small sliver of drool sliding down onto his chest. I might by no means have deliberate that. But by some means that tiny unintentional second holds the whole lot the image must say. We’re all so visually literate from day one that you simply need to work arduous to stretch the on a regular basis into one thing significant, or convey the extraordinary again right down to earth. It’s about catching one thing that subverts expectation and, for me, feeling each atypical and intensely charged on the similar time. I need to flip it again round to you. You’re working with typically tons of of individuals, and I need to contact on DOOM, which is the opposite main piece of yours that I’ve skilled. In DOOM, I actually let go of my standard inside inhibitions and submitted myself to the expertise in a manner that I discovered very transformative. We have been already arrange with the expectation of a timer, a countdown, and that fascinated me. I discovered myself wandering, drifting between moments, typically away from the principle motion after which again once more. I used to be hyper conscious of my physique and my place within the house in a manner that I’m not normally in exhibitions. It felt genuinely thrilling.I suppose that’s what attracts me to your follow. Something in regards to the variables you arrange for the viewer, whether or not primarily efficiency or sculpture, they merely increase your pulse. Can you discuss that? How do you set that up for folks? How do you concentrate on gesture, dance, and efficiency when you’re working at that scale, with so many our bodies concerned? 

AI: First is the will that one thing goes on for perpetually. That the time you might be in a single house with the opposite particular person lasts perpetually and one second in time feels infinite. Like it does when you’re falling in love. What you described earlier, taking the picture simply after the second, when one thing has already shifted, actually stayed with me. That’s the place the poetry is for you. My work can really feel like an overload of photos, gestures, even disciplines. When I work with performers, a part of it’s about their excellence, what they do finest, and meet that as an artist, be current sufficient to essentially collaborate. What turned very clear to me in DOOM was how a lot the work exists within the viewers. Someone like you will note issues I might by no means anticipate, since you convey your personal historical past, your personal manner of seeing. In that sense, everybody noticed their very own piece. That made me query how a lot I’m intentionally inserting that means, and the way a lot that means emerges via the viewer, via timing, notion, and expertise. DOOM was necessary for me as a result of it clarified one thing elementary: that dance as a type was carrying greater than any particular person reference or picture. The stricter the shape, like in ballet, the extra the smallest deviations matter. The clearer the pose, the extra influence there’s in what slips, bends, or breaks. 

TM: I completely had the feeling that I used to be inside an exhibition by an artist who needed me to really feel conscious in my physique. Most reveals the viewer waits for photos to ship that means or info, however your exhibition expertise was completely completely different. It felt participatory due to the best way you staged the objects. It actually raised my pulse simply shifting via the house.When you discuss pictures as a sort of coordinated efficiency, that also actually resonates with me. I’m at all times making an attempt to stroll that line between the acquainted and the unfamiliar; bringing the viewer to water, however not forcing them to drink. I attempt to keep away from the didactic picture. Instead, I make photos that really feel recognizable sufficient, typically tied to my childhood in Atlanta, however twisted simply sufficient to really feel barely uncanny. I consider them as “lightly staged.” I like that in-between house the place the viewer has to resolve what feels discovered or caught, and what’s truly constructed. Photography is slippery that manner. We all carry assumptions about authenticity and artifice in our collective creativeness. Especially now, when the function of the picture is already so questioned, what excites me is making pictures that don’t sit neatly in both class, however straddles the road of many issues.  

AI: I feel there’s a want in each of our practices to create from a spot the place a picture is developing however isn’t totally there but, proper? It’s nearly like a ready-made that you simply discover, and let’s say the ready-made is like an expertise. A second you acknowledge, a sliver you seize… then eager to push it additional and to present it type as a result of one thing related. That’s the place questions of pose are available in for me. What is a pose? How lengthy is it held? What does it include? If you will have a motion in time vs a pose, for instance. It’s so lovely. That compression, how a lot want and time can sit inside one picture, is what makes your pictures really feel so charged to me.  

TM: I’m looking for a gesture. There’s clearly instinct concerned. I’m serious about an image I product of two brothers. The youthful one had fallen asleep on his older brother’s chest. I didn’t {photograph} the sleep itself, however the image simply after, as he awakened, when there was this small sliver of drool sliding down onto his chest. I might by no means have deliberate that. But by some means that tiny unintentional second holds the whole lot the image must say. We’re all so visually literate from day one that you simply need to work arduous to stretch the on a regular basis into one thing significant, or convey the extraordinary again right down to earth. It’s about catching one thing that subverts expectation and, for me, feeling each atypical and intensely charged on the similar time. I need to flip it again round to you. You’re working with typically tons of of individuals, and I need to contact on DOOM, which is the opposite main piece of yours that I’ve skilled. In DOOM, I actually let go of my standard inside inhibitions and submitted myself to the expertise in a manner that I discovered very transformative. We have been already arrange with the expectation of a timer, a countdown, and that fascinated me. I discovered myself wandering, drifting between moments, typically away from the principle motion after which again once more. I used to be hyper conscious of my physique and my place within the house in a manner that I’m not normally in exhibitions. It felt genuinely thrilling.I suppose that’s what attracts me to your follow. Something in regards to the variables you arrange for the viewer, whether or not primarily efficiency or sculpture, they merely increase your pulse. Can you discuss that? How do you set that up for folks? How do you concentrate on gesture, dance, and efficiency when you’re working at that scale, with so many our bodies concerned?  

AI: First is the will that one thing goes on for perpetually. That the time you might be in a single house with the opposite particular person lasts perpetually and one second in time feels infinite. Like it does when you’re falling in love. What you described earlier, taking the picture simply after the second, when one thing has already shifted, actually stayed with me. That’s the place the poetry is for you. My work can really feel like an overload of photos, gestures, even disciplines. When I work with performers, a part of it’s about their excellence, what they do finest, and meet that as an artist, be current sufficient to essentially collaborate. What turned very clear to me in DOOM was how a lot the work exists within the viewers. Someone like you will note issues I might by no means anticipate, since you convey your personal historical past, your personal manner of seeing. In that sense, everybody noticed their very own piece. That made me query how a lot I’m intentionally inserting that means, and the way a lot that means emerges via the viewer, via timing, notion, and expertise. DOOM was necessary for me as a result of it clarified one thing elementary: that dance as a type was carrying greater than any particular person reference or picture. The stricter the shape, like in ballet, the extra the smallest deviations matter. The clearer the pose, the extra influence there’s in what slips, bends, or breaks. 

TM:  Yeah, let’s discuss that. I’m fascinated with the way you associated to type, particularly the thought of magnificence, and the sculptural physique in dance. Ballet is such a strict, predetermined language of gesture. I’m curious: Are you making an attempt to interrupt it, or inhabit it and reshape it from the within? I think about some folks would possibly anticipate one thing extra confrontational primarily based in your earlier work. How do you concentrate on magnificence and classical types of efficiency now? 

AI: Just a few years in the past, I noticed I used to be changing into fascinated with ballet. I began serious about how the feminine physique is portrayed in ballet, the way it operates. There’s this picture of untouchable feminine magnificence that extends far past what occurs on stage. Working with Devon Teuscher on DOOM and attending to know extra of the historical past of classical ballet, I found that it’s handed on as an oral historical past. The concept of type and wonder is handed from ballerina to ballerina over generations. That confrontation with self-discipline, with inheritance, with expectation is what drew me in, and it’s what challenged me. 

TM: What’s coming to thoughts for me is this type of evolution, or perhaps even a confrontation, with one thing you as soon as bristled towards. I feel most individuals who noticed your early works wouldn’t instantly consider ballet. And but, by some means, it feels inevitable that you’d need to have interaction with one thing so rigorous and classical, one thing so tied to concepts of magnificence. I maintain serious about the set up of Citizen (2025) in Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art. It’s significantly highly effective. It’s not simple to translate the expertise of DOOM into an exhibition format, and I assumed it was actually sensible to deal with it as a totally completely different work, quite than a doc. I assumed it was an exquisite method to eschew conventional efficiency documentation. There’s at all times that query with efficiency: How do you convey it later, or do you even attempt to? Can you discuss that? How do you concentrate on that shift, making a stay efficiency versus translating it into an exhibition like “Fun ist ein Stahlbad”? 

AI: Citizen is constituted of materials filmed by a performer within the piece. The performer filmed from her iPhone to be stay streamed on the jumbotron. She adopted characters via the piece, even to the backstage that functioned concurrently as their non-public areas. These moments appeared intimate and introverted, displaying their inside dialogues and ideas. She filmed, for instance, Xavier Days doing a flexn solo over 4 nights in one of many locker rooms within the again. In Citizen, it’s introduced as a four-channel video, with every channel displaying a special night time. You see Xavier making the identical motion with small variations. At first look it could possibly be 4 digicam views, however it’s not, it’s 4 completely different evenings, 4 completely different performances. He’s so actual due to his reminiscence and his muscle reminiscence, despite the fact that it’s not scored. 

TM: There’s nearly this POV camera-like side to it, which I discover sturdy. And then there’s this nearly breaking of the self-discipline of dance itself. You suppose you’re watching one dancer repeat the identical motion from 4 completely different views, however in actuality it’s 4 completely different nights. He’s so exacting together with his physique, so exact in his muscle reminiscence, that the excellence disappears. And it might not matter whether or not the viewer is aware of that consciously, however it feels baked into the piece. Am I studying that accurately? 

AI: DOOM was partly created via stay course and change. With Xavier, for instance, I texted him throughout a efficiency to ask whether or not we might strive inserting his solo right into a second that had simply opened up. I simply requested him: Hey, do you need to strive the solo spontaneously and you are taking the stage proper now? He’s skilled in responding to that sort of scenario, and it labored, not as a result of it was deliberate, however as a result of it was examined in actual time. That sort of responsiveness was central to the piece. It wasn’t about me controlling the whole lot, however about shaping the work collectively, in entrance of the viewers. That method continues within the exhibition, despite the fact that the supplies are completely different. I nonetheless work till the final second. 

TM: Which I documented! [laughs] 

AI: It was so lovely for me that you simply witnessed this second as a result of it’s not simple… Lots of issues are intuitive, and though my instinct by no means fails me, it’s not at all times proper. Sometimes I make the final step and it’s one too many. But that’s what it’s. 

TM: That’s a part of the follow. I get the sense from listening to you speak, that that, in and of itself, is the push. That is what makes the art-making value it. 

AI: It’s urgency. 

TM: Right? It creates that urgency, that heightened pulse, like you’re proper on the sting of attending to one thing that’s actually thrilling, that may reveal itself. That rush feels necessary. 

AI: There has to be a sure second the place it can’t be prevented. That’s the urgency of it. I don’t know when you have that too. 

TM: I do too, in a special manner. I’m definitely at all times tinkering to the final minute. Cropping or re-cropping a photograph, enjoying with it’s scale as effectively. Once I resolve on a scale for {a photograph}, that’s the dimensions by which that work will at all times be introduced so it’s fairly a weighty resolution. There’s additionally the making of the pictures by which I’m looking for a particular second that negotiates the stress of embracing sure cliches while additionally avoiding them. Moments which can be between staged and located. This is especially essential when navigating representational pictures and Blackness because the viewer brings their very own loaded baggage to such photos. 

AI: I feel you’re a grasp in navigating that pressure very exactly. What I need to add is that with flexn and ballet, the storytelling of every self-discipline is at all times current, whether or not I intend it or not. The story isn’t one thing I impose. It comes from the performer. It’s their physique, their historical past, their manner of shifting that carries that means.In ballet, the story is very clear and codified… It’s typically the identical story being repeated. With flexn, the story feels extra open, extra porous, extra formed by lived expertise. Placing these two subsequent to one another permits one thing to crack open. I don’t know if I’ve totally succeeded in doing that, however I really feel that the query of storytelling has change into extra pressing for me via this course of. 

TM: What’s the archetype of story you’re making an attempt to inform? You took on one thing as loaded as Romeo and Juliet, and I need to maintain that thought as I convey it to “Fun ist ein Stahlbad.” When I walked into your present at Serralves… initially, what an unimaginable museum… I used to be genuinely floored. The manner you used the constructing was so considerate. I actually need to offer you credit score. I feel this was one other a type of jaw-on-the-floor moments. As an artist, it was deeply inspiring to encounter a follow so completely different from my very own and nonetheless stroll away serious about carry what I felt again into my work. So I need to begin at the start as effectively with the Serralves present. How did you arrive on the concepts that turned the present? How did the dialog develop, particularly with the curator Inês Grosso, who appears good? What have been the core questions you have been working with, and what did you need the viewer to depart with, even earlier than the reveal of the pool? 

AI: I needed to deal with the discovered object and the ready-made, however reworking it into one thing that’s produced, that I type and form as an object that comes near the unique, however is uncannily deviant from it. So the group barrier sculptures, for instance, in earlier exhibitions have been unfold all through the entire house, nearly formless. In Serralves Museum I needed to place them into one sculptural type. So I constructed Arena (2025), a hoop that’s enclosed the place you can’t enter. I needed to make this one sculptural gesture, and that allowed me to depart the room with the partitions nearly free. I needed to have the constructing correspond with the sculpture. Same with Tower (2025), in fact the tower is a diving platform. It’s impressed by the diving board that’s nonetheless within the former exclusion zone in Chernobyl the place the catastrophe occurred in ’86. 

TM: Which I’m so fascinated with, by the best way. 

AI: Me too. I labored with it for a video piece referred to as Youth that I made. In the work, horses principally run freely via city landscapes as a herd. It’s principally a utopian second in an entire dystopia. 

TM: Seeing the diving board in your present, I instantly felt this pressure between utopia and dystopia. And it hit one thing private for me. About ten years in the past, I truly made a video of myself on the pool of the non-public college I attended in Atlanta. I didn’t go to the general public college I used to be zoned for; as an alternative, my mother and father put me in a predominantly white Christian non-public college. The sort you possibly can in all probability image. It had an unlimited Olympic-size pool. I used to be perhaps considered one of ten or so Black youngsters in my class, and abruptly I’m anticipated to carry out effectively in swimming class. It carried a racial cost that was inconceivable to ignore.Years later, I went again and filmed myself climbing the diving board. It turned this metaphor for therefore many issues… preparation, danger, levels of life, expectation. The act of standing there, about to leap, held all of that. 

AI: Also the peak from the ground. What if there isn’t a water? There is this concept of loss of life in there too. 

TM: Totally. And it was proper there within the piece. I observe the toes slowly up the steps to this very excessive diving board. It felt nearly like your sculpture. I feel that’s why it moved me so viscerally after I first noticed your rendering of it in your studio. And then, after I got here to doc the present, I used to be struck once more by all these associations to the concern of swimming. The query of whether or not there’s even water beneath, the peak, the uncertainty of touchdown. I discovered myself serious about all of that whereas wanting on the piece. And so I simply need to say it hit one thing very deep for me. 

AI: In a manner, it is usually about how the physique is perceived on this second, singled out amongst different our bodies. When you’re on prime of a diving board and individuals are taking a look at you, there’s an expectation that’s created, proper? Will they leap? There’s additionally loads in regards to the physique in relation to others. How is my physique completely different? How do I relate? What does it imply? Everybody leaves their garments within the locker rooms after which they exit. For me, there’s quite a lot of depth in there, simply in my physique reminiscence and what it did to me. That has to do with being queer, being in that atmosphere, and having to meet a sure expectation of grace, of velocity, of all this stuff, simply to have the ability to swim, proper? 

TM: Even the way you land within the water, what sort of splash you make. Everyone will decide you! [laughs] If I back-flop and it’s this large splash, are folks already laughing by the point I come up for air? These are all actual questions. 

AI: I had swimming classes on the swimming pool within the little city I grew up in. There was this competitors, and all of the mother and father got here and watched from the bleachers. I didn’t perceive that the competitors was about velocity. I assumed it was about diving. And so I jumped in, and dived as deep as I might, all the best way to the underside. I assumed I received. Then I got here up and all people was racing. I used to be so embarrassed. I don’t understand how I might have missed it or if I missed it on function, as a result of I knew I wouldn’t have been capable of win. I didn’t have the means to compete with the others. I don’t know if there’s something within the sculpture that has to do with the problem of comparability, competing and what the water holds. 

TM: I feel there are moments in all of our lives the place we abruptly change into so hyper conscious of our our bodies and our variations. As a child particularly, you simply need to slot in. So when one thing exposes that distinction, you carry that so deeply in your muscle reminiscence. It shapes who you might be, the way you relate to the whole lot else later in life. And I can really feel all that in your work.The different factor I maintain coming again to is this concept that anybody standing on a diving board immediately turns into this object of public spectacle. There’s one thing unavoidable about that picture. It makes me take into consideration you, the artist, standing in that place. Do you see any of that metaphor within the work? Is there one thing within the present that displays your personal journey as a really public-facing artist, or do you resist that studying? 

AI: It’s attention-grabbing that you simply say that, as a result of I feel you’re proper… despite the fact that I wasn’t consciously serious about it whereas making the work. If we stick with the picture of standing on a diving board, with everybody watching, some need you to fail, others need you to succeed, that’s what visibility does. It creates an intense vulnerability. You make your self seen, and with that comes each recognition and the chance of being attacked. That feels very current in our tradition proper now. There’s a Kafka textual content I typically take into consideration, The Great Swimmer (1920). A determine returns house after successful a world file in swimming, and throughout the celebration they need to give a speech and say: I don’t perceive your language. I can’t even swim. There have to be some combine up. For me, the place the place work actually comes from is vulnerability, moments of ache or readability, when issues abruptly come into sharp focus. My profession unfolded in a short time, particularly round Faust and DOOM, and there was a way of getting to maneuver sooner than I might totally course of. I’m nonetheless catching as much as these moments, however now in a way more seen place.That visibility permits folks to see you as a determine quite than as an individual, and it invitations quite a lot of projection. I needed to ask you about working throughout completely different fields. Photography carries questions of illustration very straight. Thinking about your current work, particularly Superfine: Tailoring Black Style (2025), these photos maintain an unlimited historic and cultural weight. They matter deeply, and so they reshape how visible reminiscence is carried ahead. It connects to what we talked about earlier, how photos form a sort of collective muscle reminiscence. You’re working in an area the place artwork and trend are inseparable. I’m curious the way you expertise that place, the accountability, the liberty, and the visibility inside it. 

TM: If there’s any a part of the dialog I hope folks keep in mind, it’s this. That’s precisely what I noticed in that diving board: that spectacle and the vulnerability of getting into view. I relate to the acceleration you describe. Visibility has a manner of turning you into an emblem sooner than you possibly can perceive what’s occurring. But beneath that, in fact, I’m nonetheless solely human. Still catching up. 

AI: It’s nonetheless you doing this work, and that issues. The work carries actual that means for many individuals who look to you and see you as somebody capable of maintain this second and make it accessible. That e-book holds a lot traditionally, culturally, emotionally, however it’s additionally about your eye, and the way you see one thing like dandyism as an expression of distinction and otherness. To insist on that distinction, and to make it seen, to make a e-book about it feels particularly necessary proper now. 

TM: When I received the decision about taking part in that catalogue and exhibition, I knew straight away it mattered. It’s completely related to the query of being a public determine. Dandyism is already in regards to the efficiency of the self in public, particularly towards dominant codes of gown. Those turning factors in my profession have typically required me to step up, characterize myself, and settle for a sure vulnerability within the work. And how does an artist take care of that? You form of merely get on with the work. You stick with it. 

AI: What stayed with me was how a lot data is held in these photos, within the clothes, but in addition in how they’re worn. There’s exaggeration, however additionally withholding. That pressure carries accountability, and it issues when these photos flow into. 

TM: Photography is commonly all we’ve got left of these performances… They need to be related by some means! That’s the burden of the {photograph}! [laughs] 

AI: This connects to illustration and accountability, and to the best way reminiscence is formed, very otherwise from an algorithm. That brings me again to trend. There’s typically a double customary, the place trend or industrial work is seen as decreasing artwork, whereas the artwork world claims the next ethical floor. I’m fascinated with how that speaks to you, and whether or not working with trend means that you can declare issues that aren’t at all times doable inside artwork alone. 

TM: This is a dialog we’re each in all probability drained of, however it’s one we need to have, as a result of we work in it. These are the modes that truly form tradition. Our work strikes into the world in methods the artwork world claims to worth, however typically doesn’t totally facilitate. 

AI: Don’t you suppose it’s porous? I by no means actually felt the hazard was about diminishing worth. The financial stream isn’t clear anymore, it’s very a lot the identical discipline, and the excellence is commonly simply upheld symbolically. 

TM: It will depend on what folks need their picture to be. For me, pictures is the place a few of the radical innovation has occurred via trend. The white dice was removed from my actuality rising up in Atlanta. I used to be by no means taught negotiate in or relate to these areas. I’m not fascinated with subduing one aspect of myself in favor of the opposite. I’m each. Each provides a special manner of accessing tradition.At the top of the day, I see myself as somebody who bears witness. 

AI: I’m excited by what artwork can do, despite the fact that we can’t management what occurs due to it. I can solely stick with what feels proper. The distinction between artwork and trend typically comes again to a concern of complicity with capitalism. 

TM: That’s very actual. Why would we silo this stuff if the individuals who witness our work don’t? That appears like the best word to finish on.Is there any false impression you’d prefer to clear up? 

AI: I don’t actually imagine in misconceptions. But it might damage when folks mission issues onto you. 

TM: How to just accept when somebody sees one thing in you that you simply don’t acknowledge in your self? 

AI: Same query to you. 

TM: People typically assume I’m European. I at all times inform them I’m from Atlanta, Georgia, and so they go you might be?! Maybe it’s my hair or the best way I gown. It says loads about what folks anticipate sure aesthetics to belong to. 

AI: Maybe the false impression about me is that I’m a cynic, that I work with irony… however I’m very honest. I’m not emptying issues out. I’m very severe in regards to the romance. 

TM: I see that sincerity within the work. 

AI: I couldn’t be additional away from cynicism. 

TM: The closing query: Is there a dream mission you’re enthusiastic about? 

AI: I feel I need to make one thing very small. Like a duet. 

TM: That appears like an attractive word to finish on. 

Portraits courtesy of Tyler Mitchell. 

“Fun ist ein Stahlbad,” on view from December 2025 to April 2026, was organized and produced by the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art in collaboration with Anne Imhof, and curated by Inês Grosso, the museum’s Chief Curator, with Exhibition and Installation Design by Andrea Faraguna. The photograph session between Anne and Tyler passed off throughout the set up of the exhibition.  

Conversation Concept and Editorial Development by Estella Sirotta.