The hardest thing to do is something that is close to nothing.
It's okay that we're not perfect. It's okay that we all have problems. It's okay to cry, to show emotions.
To me the pain and the blood are merely means of artistic expression.
You see, what is my purpose of performance artist is to stage certain difficulties and stage the fear the primordial fear of pain, of dying, all of which we have in our lives, and then stage them in front of audience and go through them and tell the audience, I'm your mirror; if I can do this in my life, you can do it in yours.
I hate repetition. Even when I am home and have to buy milk, I go a different way each time to avoid having a habit of anything. Habits are really bad. So to me it is really important to live in what I call the spaces in-between. Bus stations, trains, taxis or waiting rooms in airports are the best places because you are open to destiny, you are open to everything and anything can happen.
An artist should not fall in love with another artist.
The body has an enormous power of healing, if you really believe you are going to be healed, you're going to be healed. If you really believe you're going to die, you're going to die. If you apply this kind of method to everything, then there is hope.
I just want to create situations where people forget time.
If you're a baker, making bread, you're a baker. If you make the best bread in the world, you're not an artist, but if you bake the bread in the gallery, you're an artist. So the context makes the difference.
I believe so much in the power of performance I don't want to convince people. I want them to experience it and come away convinced on their own.
I realise the power of art that does not hang on the walls of galleries.
Don't even ask me why. I do not know, I have no answer to this insane behaviour.
When you have a nonverbal conversation with a total stranger, then he cant cover himself with words, he cant create a wall.
We are actually living in a million parallel realities every single minute.
You know, art is very emotional business. But mostly it becomes not emotional, the fabric of commodity. It becomes business. It becomes so many different things. Because we forgot there was emotions involved.
Why not do something strange and different for once? Artists can do whatever they want!
We always project into the future or reflect in the past, but we are so little in the present.
I've always asked myself since I was young, what is my duty on this planet? What am I there for? Just to hang around? Everybody must have some purpose.
The only way to change consciousness and the world around us is to start with yourself.
We always want to do things the way we like, that's why we never change.
I have always staged my fears as a way to transcend them.
I say we don't need art in nature, because it's so perfect without us. We need it in the cities. But the cities have absolutely lost their own center. They think having ten cars and a big bridge is the way to happiness. It's not.
I am not a therapist. I am not a spiritual leader. These elements are in the art: it is therapeutic, spiritual, social and political - everything. It has many layers. But art has to have many layers. If it doesn't, then forget it.
People ask why there are so few female artists who succeed. It's because women are not ready to sacrifice as much as men. Women want a man, they want a family, they want to have children, they want to be loved, and to be an artist. And they can't; it's impossible.
The brother of my grandfather was the patriarch of the Orthodox Church and revered as a saint. So everything in my childhood is about total sacrifice, whether to religion or to communism. This is what is engraved on me. This is why I have this insane willpower. My body is now beginning to be falling apart, but I will do it to the end. I don't care. With me it is about whatever it takes.
