With 1,500 visitors over two months, the exhibition “Tout de suite” Galerie 21 by artist Priscille Deborah is a huge success. Interview.

How to present your artistic approach?

My painting is my way of dancing, of breathing, of existing. I always paint in music: my work is practiced in body language, movement. Kind of like a tribal dance. A search for pure emotion, a return to childhood. Besides, imperfections are welcome: the essential being authenticity.

You say your painting is liberating. That is to say ?

Efficiency. In the sense that, in my opinion, freedom is a search for the audacity of which Nicolas de Staël speaks so well. She invites the public to dare to be themselves without pretense. My painting leaves no room for lies.

Your characters are half human, half fantastic. Why ?

Human beings have always fascinated me. Everything that hides beyond appearances intrigues me. Maybe because it took a long time to come to terms with myself and stop living in the eyes of others. My paintings also praise the madness and the party with these characters with cat ears or wolf heads.

Your performances at the gallery have marked a lot of visitors. Do you like this sharing with the public?

Painting is a solitary act that I appreciate. But I also like the contact with the world. It is the encounter with the other that allows us to move forward. In addition, performing a performance within a given time is endangering you which forces you to be more spontaneous.

What does it mean to be an artist in 2021?

Bringing dreams to people, taking them to somewhere else that allows them to detach themselves from everyday life. Art opens the way for the search for meaning, for spirituality, for encounters, for true joy. It’s essential. We, artists, are fortunate to have another relationship to time which allows a certain distance to translate the world we denounce and / or the one in which we would like to live.

A project for 2022?

I would like to go on an artistic residency abroad. With a penchant for Africa. Discover a new culture, other colors, new landscapes, new materials. Getting out of my comfort zone to always go further in my artistic research: this is my quest..