LUX’s Chief Contributing Editor, Maryam Eisler, talks to friends and internationally acclaimed artists, Italian Michelangelo Pistoletto and Cameroonian Pascale Marthine Tayou about artistic dialogue, cultural roots and creative chaos

Maryam Eisler: I’m fascinated by this idea of creative duality, a dialogue which wouldn’t naturally come together. You have always said ‘one and one makes three… it is the fusion of differences’. How do you explain this? Why does it work?  

Michelangelo Pistoletto: It’s a perfect duality made of two antique yet contemporary cultures. All the elements that we have in the exhibition are made with these two cultures: one European, the other African. Although there is a long history separating these continents, there is a shared perpetual connection and aggression, a cultural, ecological and technological aggression. We live in a moment where we need to fuse these opposites, to produce a third phenomenology that I call ‘the third paradise’. 

Turin-born painter, Michelangelo Pistoletto, acknowledged as one of. the pioneers of the ‘Arte Povera’ movement in Italy, has a focus on reflections and mirrors across his work

ME: Pascale, I believe you’ve found inspiration in the words of Edouard Glissant; what are your thoughts on him saying that ‘the mixture of art and language produces the unexpected, this other space, this third paradise, a space where dispersion allows for connections, where culture clashes, where disharmonies, disorders, and interference become creative forces’.  

Maryam Eisler, photographer and LUX’s Chief Contributing Editor, photographs Pascale Marthine Tayou, Belgian-based artist with a focus on setting man and nature ambivalently together, to underscore the fact that artworks are social, cultural, or political constructions

Pascale Marthine Tayou: I think it’s about how you bring those elements together and finding what’s in between the lines. In terms of culture becoming a creative force, I believe a key part of my evolution was these elements influencing me while growing up. I didn’t know which path to take because there was so much confusion around my upbringing, so I had to find my own way to escape and survive. I never thought I was ‘making art’, but I’ve learnt a lot about my practice through connections and people’s opinions; I’m discovering myself through others’ eyes. For this body of work, I asked myself about the magic of form. I thought I’d find what makes these objects so special, maybe because they are so dark and it’s impossible to get through them. I thought of what I could do with transparent material, to try and catch the truth, but I went even deeper. More transparency means it’s harder to catch this truth; that is the meaning of life. There’s no answer, you must only express yourself.   

ME: You’re talking effectively about spirituality, a bit of philosophical death tying in beautifully with reflection, refraction and use of glass and mirror. Walk me through this use of light.  

MP: You see in this room we have black and white.  

The collaboration between Pistoletto’s multi-disciplinary, multi-voiced practice, and Tayou’s works, seeking to redefine postcolonial issues via the European experience, has been the rich source of creative dialogue.

ME: Yes, yin and yang! 

MP: They present the two opposites. Without them, we have nothing in between. There cannot be solely light or darkness, but together, they make a new world.  

PMT: They are like two borders. There’s always something between and that’s the mystery of creativity, trying to catch that. 

MP: But between, we have all the colours!  

PMT: Of course! The harmony comes from balancing both shadow and light. You are only visible because of both; that third paradise is in between.  

MP: The two extreme elements produce an explosion at the centre! Something chaotic, working towards harmony. The objective of the arts is to recombine with harmony. Art has always been in search of peace, and we are still trying to recombine these concepts.  

ME: Chaos and harmony, interesting words today. What is this chaos you talk about?  

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MP: To clarify, the chaos isn’t necessarily negative. Chaos is the only order possible, but we need to understand how it can be used to allow us to live in an advanced, spiritual way.   

ME: An interesting discussion in a world where everything isn’t in ‘orderly chaos’ necessarily.  

MP: Chaos is fantastic because everything is included within it; the universe is working by contrast. Despite this, it’s up to us to create harmony and dynamic balance.  

Both Pistoletto and Tayou express interest in materials and their significance within art, and both artists find that every point in the universe is a centre-point; there is not just one.

ME: Is this the power of art? Can life and politics replicate art?  

PMT: Art is a state of mind, like a group of people making soup. If two people had the same spices, water and tomato, they would make two completely different pots of soup. As we grow up and progress as human beings, we become more political. We go deeper into the traffic of evolution and learn about a life of confrontation, refraction and fragmentation, which we learn to deal with. Through art, we can share this.  

ME: Now we understand your chaotic journey, your chaos is a different kind, isn’t it Mr Pistoletto? 

MP: Not necessarily. We just have different approaches. Mine is more rational and his is more emotional. But from his emotions he grows a diverse dimension, amalgamating emotion and reason. Personally, I start with rationality. I try to research and give reason to the basic phenomenon of existence. That’s why the mirror painting shows reality without personal interpretation. Just as it is.  

Read More: Maryam Eisler: Confined Artists

ME: I find it very interesting that you’ve referred to these mirror paintings as a symbol of society, with each fragment representing an individual.  

MP: I included society, nature, day, night, time and space. While doing these paintings, I saw the universe concentrate on the infinity of the mirror. This is a phenomenon; its not something I decided. I had no feelings about it, nor did I want to have any. Finally, when I saw the real truth, I experienced the biggest emotion one can experience : that related to reason. I had the answer to my question.  

ME: At the end of the day, it’s about a collective memory, is it not? 

MP: In my work, there is Pistoletto, not as one, but as everybody. They are the author of my work, not just me. I simply raised the formula that includes everybody and everything. The mind has the power to bring images to reality; the mirror is the image of existence. While the image doesn’t know it exists, I know I exist. This is what is important: art has the capacity to interpret existence. 

Tayou’s work explores movement, changes, economics and the environment; the artist uses repurposed materials for a lot of his practice. 

ME: From this dialogue, what have you learnt from each other? This is the third exhibition you’ve done together? 

MP: I think there’s love between us, not in a romantic sense.  

ME: What about respect? 

MP: Love is a precursor for respect. Respect is not sufficient; one gets to it with sentiment.  

PMT: Personally, I think respect is something innate and platonic. For example, my father’s love for me is just that of a father’s love for his son, not because we are on the same level.  

Pistoletto’s iconic mirror images are photo-silkscreened images on steel. These works were developed in 1962, and represent Pistoletto’s interests in conceptualism and figuration. The reflective nature of the pieces force the viewer to become an integral part of the piece, as well as the gallery itself.

MP: I say ‘love differences’, which I mean literally; the Mediterranean is surrounded by cultures. Loving differences isn’t just accepting or respecting, but ‘loving’ goes further. Between two people, in order to create, you have to love. Nothing else.  

ME: This is possibly the most positive message we can project out there in the universe, precisely with this very recipe.  

Pistoletto and Tayou underscore the importance of friendship in spurring concepts, art and art theory in fruitful dialogues.

MP: Today, we share the human spirit; we have common ancestors from Africa, where the concept of humanity was developed. This spread North and South, to America and everywhere else. We are the first and last threads of history. We’re talking about the art of this very wave which unites all these ideas.  

PMT: Honestly, it’s not easy for me, coming from a continent polluted by the conquering European race. We might say that I am sold, as reality is rather conditioned by the material.  

MP: This reality means that we are conditioned to ask questions where there are problems. We’re not going to look for wealth elsewhere; we must redefine all of this. If I’m involved in this, art does not exist. It doesn’t interest me. What interests me are people.  

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This interview was conducted at Patricia Low Contemporary, Gstaad, in February 2024, during the exhibition ‘Alternative Centers‘, a dialogue show between Michelangelo Pistoletto and Pascale Marthine Tayou, which ran fro, December 26 to February 11 2024.

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Two cameras, one journey, two childhood friends — and eighteen days to shoot their surroundings across the American West. Maryam Eisler and Alexei Riboud had followed separate paths for 38 years. Would the two photographers’ love of the still image converge their paths? LUX finds out

After graduating from high school together in Paris, in 1985, Maryam (then Homayoun) Eisler and Alexei Riboud parted ways; Eisler to the world of business, first at L’Oréal and then at Estée Lauder in London and in New York; Riboud to the world of graphic design and photography, in Paris, New York and Johannesburg, following in the footsteps of his celebrated parents, photographer Marc Riboud and sculptor, author and poet Barbara Chase-Riboud.

Lights glowing faintly, flickering occasionally on an old, lonesome sign for a motel on the border of Marfa, Texas, that is long gone; photographed by Maryam Eisler, 2024

Nearly four decades later, in early 2024, the art world brought them back together, for a three-week American road trip through parts of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and Utah, photographing space, place and people along the way in a form of visual dialogue. In, and in-between locals travelling by car, well over 2000 miles, from Houston to El Paso… Marfa, Presidio and White Sands to Santa Fe and Canyon Point… they’d hop out of the vehicle at any given moment, and say ‘See you in an hour!’, and go their respective ways, out in the wilderness, reacting to circumstances as they came across them, vowing not to give any advice to each other on what or how to shoot. Not even sharing their images until they returned home.

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Laughing, the two recall the fifteen U-turns they took on one straight 22 mile road from Espagnola to Ghost Ranch, because they kept seeing elements they wanted to capture, not to mention the 24 hours they spent obsessing over a missed opportunity, a derelict 1950s motel, now far behind them.

White sands National Park, New Mexico, photographed by Alexei Riboud, 2024

The images that Eisler and Riboud produced provide an intriguing study of contrasting perspectives and techniques. They both certainly shared a road trip, but in artistic terms (and fortunately for the viewer of the works), they were on parallel journeys, each producing compelling results. As Carrie Scott, the art historian and curator, notes: ‘I am buoyed by the conversation here between these two artists. Maryam and Alexei are shaping our perceptions of the American West through their dual lenses, which in turns gives us a moment to reflect on our fixed perspectives.’ It’s a far cry, as Scott adds, from the ‘longstanding tradition in American photography, dating back to the 19th century, of a singular male voice and viewpoint.’

A friendly security guard at the Concordia cemetery  in El Paso, TX giving Eisler and Riboud directions to the tomb of John Wesley Hardin, the man who earned himself a reputation as one of the Wild West’s most pernicious gunslinging outlaws; photographed by Maryam Eisler, 2024

Riboud is attracted to the outskirts and grey areas, the transitional spaces and borders where he finds the elements to compose his photographs. His approach has been refined over many years of shooting in diverse locations, including Havana, Tokyo, Johannesburg, Mumbai, Shanghai, Chicago and of course Paris — usually with a focus on the peripheral spaces within or next to large cities.

A railway track cutting through the town of Marfa, Texas, photographed by Alexei Riboud, 2024

‘I like wandering into places I have never been to, especially on the margins of well-known locations, exploring the counter-space of an established geography. My photography is about experimentation. I gather fragments from urban landscapes, in an effort to capture innate structures’, says Riboud. ‘On this trip, I was drawn to the outskirts of towns, and to the frontiers between human settlements and the unpopulated natural environments.’

A Navajo Nation dancer performing an indigenous ritual dance impersonating animal spirits, Page, Arizona; photographed by Maryam Eisler, 2024

‘This trip was a huge challenge for me’, says Eisler: ‘My focus has always been on the figurative and more specifically on what I like to call the ‘Sublime Feminine’ in its physicality and in its essence. I had to push myself to work in a new way, this time around, moving away from body landscape to natural landscape.’ But would she find parallels between nature and figure?

Read more: Maryam Eisler: Intimate Landscapes

‘In my work, I always talk about female ‘body architecture’ in dialogue with spatial architecture… its curvilinear slopes, its nooks and its crannies, its valleys. I have often explored this theme in big, barren, hostile nature, from Iceland to Mexico and beyond, except this time the female figure was not there to be photographed. I also surprised myself in adopting a new way to work… primarily using a wide angle lens (which I never do) in order to capture as much of the big sky and vast land as my lens could take in. I wanted to visually overdose on the nature that surrounded me!’

In between walls of a teared down house in the border town of Presidio, Texas, photographed by Alexei Riboud, 2024

It’s no wonder that these two photographers operated quite differently during the road trip. They are two very different characters. Eisler’s made a quicksilver shift from business and writing to art, and has the smiling, knowing grace of a meditative guru while retaining the poise of a terrifying boss.

Alexei Riboud, photographed by Maryam Eisler on US Highway 90 near Van Horn, Texas, 2024

Riboud, on the other hand, projects a laid-back-almost-to-horizontal suave creativity. Nonetheless, both have clearly forged a deep connection that transcends their decades apart and their contrasting artistic and technical sensibilities.

Homeless young man in downtown Houston with a t-shirt depicting Martin Luther King and Malcolm X’s encounter; Houston, Texas; photographed by Alexei Riboud, 2024

To the extent that the origins of their photography have links, they are serendipitous, through a mutual interest in graphics. Riboud, who did graphic design for an advertising agency in South Africa in the 1990s, began to photograph on weekends, and enjoyed it enough to make it his main focus.

Derelict remains of the former Art Deco movie theatre in Marfa, Texas; The Palace, closed since the 1970s, is now an illustrator’s studio; photographed by Maryam Eisler, 2024

At L’Oréal, Eisler’s involvement in the development of ad campaigns — what she calls ‘surface beauty’ — revved up her dormant love of visual story-telling. Today, one can experience both the outer and inner dimension in her exploration of the ‘Sublime Feminine’. Laughing, she recalls her father’s niggling voice in her head, asking her what she was doing with that ‘love of photography’ she had so enthusiastically written about in her college applications? But life after the (Iranian) Revolution would dictate otherwise, until years later.

Looking through the US-Mexico border wall in El Paso near Amara House at La Hacienda, an organisation working to inspire connection beyond borders through mutual understanding and meaningful action in pursuit of narrative systems, and personal change; El Paso, Texas; photographed by Alexei Riboud, 2024

Both Alexei and Maryam have indelible memories from their trip. Alexei reflects back on the town of El Paso, near the US-Mexico border: ‘‘There was the feeling of being at a crossroad of narratives with stratified areas, unsettled spaces in transition.’ Maryam recalls a moment on the border of Utah and Arizona: ‘A hypnotising Native American ritual dance made me think deep about indigenous cultural history and the suffering that the native people have and continue to endure… I was completely mesmerised by the strength of the dancers storytelling through moves anchored deep in tradition.’ Riboud points to the gentrification of Marfa, Texas: ‘Beyoncé and Jay-Z just bought a house there! You get a sense that it’s rapidly changing from the isolated artistic outpost that Donald Judd built all those years ago; the city is now attracting newcomers, as real estate prices are booming!’

Alexei Riboud, photographed by Maryam Eisler, 2024

The two photographers’ contrasting visual perspectives provide fertile ground for dialogue, and – as Scott says, ‘a new, layered perspective on the complex reality of the 21st-century American West. Where Maryam’s portraits provide narrative depth – each portrait becomes a story, a window into the lives, cultures, and experiences of individuals within that vast expanse – Alexei’s focus on the landscape reflects on America’s historical relationship with western expansion.’

Maryam Eisler, photographed by Alexei Riboud, in Upper Antelope Canyon, Arizona 2024

Riboud praises Eisler’s link between the female body and the architecture of space and place, as well as her graphic eye mingled with sensuality. For Eisler, it’s Riboud’s conceptual visual rendering—‘almost like a painting’ — that stands out above all. ‘The lens Alexei uses enables him to capture space and light in a very unique manner. The end result is subtle, painterly and beautiful, with incredible hues of light pinks and accents of deep purples in some instances. I think Alexei uses light to paint.’

Along the banks of Rio Grande river near Los Alamos, New Mexico. This is the view from the House at Otomi Bridge that frequently hosted Manhattan Project scientists. A team room and restaurant at the time – once post office and train station – where Oppenheimer kept a standing reservation for whenever he wanted to dine; New Mexico; photographed by Alexei Riboud, 2024

Kamiar Maleki, Director of Photo London, expresses their effect on one another – their oscillations, recalling Maryam’s ‘evolution from exploring the female figure to this more recent body of work’ and its ‘profound shift towards celebrating the Sublime in a new and different way – as displayed in Mother Nature‘, as well as ‘in the vast potent (waste) lands of the American West landscape.’

Maryam Eisler, as photographed by herself at Prada, Marfa, by Elmgreen & Dragset in Valentine, Texas, 2024

For Alexei, it’s his ‘minimalist elegance, presenting viewers with unexpected compositions that speak volumes through their simplicity.’

Portrait of an outsider Texan artist, James Magee, a dear friend of the painter Annabel Livermore, whose painting he sits in front of, and who various writers have described as his alter ago, a relationship referred to by The New York Times as ‘a tough act to follow’, photographed in El Paso, Texas, by Maryam Eisler, 2024

Reflecting on the journey, Eisler says, ‘I still recall the vastness of land and the ever-changing skies and clouds. We could’ve produced an entire body of work on the clouds of New Mexico; the evolving light and its plethora of shades… It was sky theatrics every day! As we drove on Interstate highways, I could not help but feel a deep sense of inner peace.

Alexei Riboud in White Sands National Park, New Mexico, photographed by Maryam Eisler, 2024

In fact, I had a memorable moment in White Sands National Park, as the sun was setting down amidst scarlet and purple skies. I recall seeing Alexei, camera in hand, standing on the opposite hill, akin to a dot in the greater universe… And for just a second or two, which felt like eternity, I took off mentally into a parallel state of mind, engulfed by Mother Nature. It was so powerful’.

Weary billboard with missing parts north of El Paso in the vast plains of Texas; photographed by Alexei Riboud, 2024

‘I think the camera changes what you see, particularly when it’s your first experience of a place, of a unique location’, says Riboud. ‘Something happens that you can’t control; it’s your subconscious working, through the frame of the camera, on the construction of the image.’

Roughly halfway between Van horn and Valentine on U.S 90 reside crumbling buildings seen through a chain link fence: a one time significant railway dewatering station, now turned ghost town of Lobo, Texas; photographed by Maryam Eisler, 2024

And when it’s not the camera, there are parallel – or, rather, oscillatory – expressions, from a writer they met along the way. Glimpse below the poem ‘Eileen’, written by poet Amanda Bloom in West Texas. Her series of linguistic short takes provide a further mode of expression, imbricating the tapestry of their journey:

Poet Amanda Bloom lying by the pool of the iconic ‘Hotel Paisano’ in Marfa Texas where the cast of the 1956 Hollywood movie ‘The Giant’, starring James Dean & Elizabeth Taylor, stayed during the filming of the movie; photographed by Maryam Eisler, 2024

Windmill sentinels
over the oil field.
The air is quick here.
You can’t keep your
thoughts with you.
The star dome
holds you down
while you move.

The yucca heads higher
than a street sign,
flowers brown and dry,
still hanging on, stalk bent
from day after day of the
troposphere in motion.
Learn surrender from
the yucca. It rattles
before its release.

The land is home
to ore, ice volcanos,
ocean floor turned
high desert, Eileen
the horse that did
not die on the way
to El Paso, you.

Pumpjacks pull.
Windmills spin.
The yucca shudders and
two brown blossoms
light on the wind.
Eileen stretches
her bum leg.

The journey – from photography to poetry – provides, in Carrie Scott’s words ‘a dialogue about the deep humanity embedded in the landscape’s history’. And, indeed, it is ‘a tapestry’ as well as a dialogue, as the Director of Photo London concludes – ‘of beauty, emotion, and storytelling, inviting viewers to contemplate the profound depths of the American big nature experience alongside the quiet poetry of simple existence.’

Here, in Riboud’s street scene in El Paso is what Eisler calls his ‘geometric approach to depicting space in its subtle linearity, very unique to his eye’; photographed by Alexei Riboud, 2024

From dialogue, to tapestry, the works will soon be woven into a book, as well as an exhibition to be launched around Photo London 2025 – and in a way, as Scott aptly notes, ‘that we haven’t seen before’.

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