Ibis Hospital / Weaving Art from the Remains of the Fallen

Interview with Ibis Hospital

Delving into the artist’s vision, which confronts the harmful today materialism and the transformation of the human body. Between a fascination with technology and the inevitability of death, artworks evoke a world where life and synthetic matter collide, creating macabre and sacred scenarios. Ibis weaves together the profane, the divine, and contemporary complexity, allowing bones and relics to emerge in their work.

We live in an age dominated by materialism, overproduction and the idealization of “objects”. How do you approach this situation, and what choices do you make on a daily basis? Are you trying to escape this toxic materialism?

I live our era to the fullest, in all its good and bad aspects. Materialistic pleasures and the artificial states that result from them are linked to city life, and I voluntarily submit to this somnambulistic bliss.
My eye is drawn to new designs, accessories and tools; everything produced by this compulsive industrial culture, without the will to possess. You can walk into a luxury boutique or a sports store just to look at new product designs, without necessarily buying them. In a city like Paris, architecture, museums, churches, all the traces of the past brings us a mental equilibrium, lifting us for a moment from the consumerist pressure that our modern times can produce.

With reference to this social status, what is your greatest fear or worst prospect for the future? How do you think this phenomenon can be curbed, and what would you like to see artists communicate more?

I have neither the will nor the weapons to curb political and ecological phenomena. There’s nothing moralistic about my work. In the manner of an X-ray, I make an extreme observation of a tacit violence exerting on our morphology. I imagine a metabolism turned upside down to the extreme.

“I practice a cult of resurrection, where death mates with everyday objects as if what surrounds us accompanies us into the afterlife. “

Increasingly, artists are experimenting with and modifying their bodies using technologies and prostheses to create human hybrids and/or mutations (obviously, this does not imply medical or therapeutic objectives). What’s your position on this? With your art, do you want to show the negative ends of this scenario, or is there a slight fascination?

Body art is a practice I observe from a distance. The cultivation of the body is not something that touches me personally or that I practice. In my sculptural work, I’m more interested in the instruments that bring about these transformations than in the result itself. Medical equipment, dental appliances, scalpels, circular saws, surgical wires… But also the tools used in various trades: plumbing, construction… the technologies used in extreme sports, too, which enable us to multiply our physical capacities tenfold: crampons, harnesses, protective gear… The modified bodily forms that inspire me belong more to fiction and art history than to reality: Hellraiser’s Cenobites, Crash ( Ballard), Mortal Kombat scenes, the body of Christ in Baroque paintings, Bellmer’s dolls…Artists who put their bodies to the test are more into a performative process, cultivating their own aesthetic appearance. My work is more of a mental projection.

Going into the theme of religion, sanctity and death… what relationships do you see between them? Is there a faith or belief to which you adhere? What do you see or believe exists post-mortem? Are there any works of yours in which you have particularly expressed these concepts?

I practice a cult of resurrection, where death mates with everyday objects as if what surrounds us accompanies us into the afterlife. Once I’ve designed those crash-tests, I set them in relation to each other in biblical chiaroscuro scenographies, echoing Baroque painting. The interest lies in clashing the profane and the sacred, by lighting crash-test dummies by candlelight. I often explore the theme of filial love in these compositions, (Announcement, Mater Dolorosa).

“My work is more of a mental projection.”

In one project, you explored the relationship between luxury fashion and the macabre. What is your artistic vision of this world, and what do you think of figures like Alexander McQueen or Margiela and their unconventional approaches? Is there a slight fascination and interest, or are there other names you particularly admire?

The imagery of luxury is often linked to death, perfume names for example: “Poison”, “Black Widow”, “Scorpio”… Paradisiacal landscapes in ads, Luxury hotels and their marble interiors remind me of giant sepulchers. By striving for standards of perfection and comfort, the luxury lifestyle can sometimes put enormous pressure on the body and mind. Beauty rituals, physical maintenance and the demands of social representation become forms of consumption in which the body is exploited, sculpted and sometimes even sacrificed to match the aesthetic ideals imposed by this lifestyle. The excesses associated with this lifestyle also consume the body. Luxury can be seen as a form of burial for the living: a place where we bury our desires under a layer of opulence. This is what I wanted to evoke through these hijackings of perfume advertising, where I mix medical imagery with fashion muse. I don’t know these two designers very well, but I’ve been struck by some of Margiela’s creations, notably the 2024 artisanal collection, in the way he treats fashion through history.

These “objects” to which we are now enslaved have both physical and psychological repercussions; the bodies and beings you create seem to devour what little human component remains. Is this why you chose certain materials? What about your decision to incorporate human bones: when did you start, and did it trigger any particular reactions?

Beneath the plastic resin of the mannequins lie bone structures just waiting to “crack” the envelope that surrounds them. These bodies, necrotic with industrial materials, express a violent struggle between living matter and synthetics. I started using bones 6 years ago, this has added “life” to my work, by embedding them in reality. The sight of human bones transforms the artistic object into a visceral experience, and that’s the whole point.

Now, in the near future, do you have any special projects you’re working on, or anything you’ve already planned?

I’m currently working on a movie project about those mannequins, as well as a comic book edition.

Weaving Art from the Remains of the Fallen

Credits:

Artist: Ibis Hospital / @ibis_hospital
Interview: Annalisa Fabbrucci / @annalisa_fabbrucci
Editor: Maria Abramenko  / @mariabramenko

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