I see behind you…
Piss Christ .
¿Obra water?
Yes, and censored in the United States.
Do you miss it?
Some congressmen collected censorship signatures. It’s stupid to censor art.
I see a crucifix…
Submerged in one of my bodily fluids: my pee.
And this is art?
Art is what you consider art.
Safe?
Marcel Duchamp, my inspiration, taught with his Fountain (a urinal) that, exhibited as a museum piece, it is art!
Would you submerge an image of Muhammad in urine?
I am a Christian, I dialogue with my religion and culture.
Is harassing a crucifix dialogue?
Vex? I express disgust at seeing Jesus hanging and tortured on a log.
Is it a complaint?
It is a work of art. And Pope Francis has given me his blessing.
What do you say?
He received a group of artists in the Sistine Chapel… and I asked for his blessing. She gave it to me.
Should I believe him?
You will see it yourself in this video, watch…
The Pope narrows his hand, I see… and gives him affectionate pats.
On the back of my right hand clenched. Let her go and look what the Pope does.
Thumbs up, OK!
I’m the only one the Pope approved like that.
The Pope blesses him as a photographer.
I’m not a photographer.
Well, his photographs are famous.
It hurts me that you call me a photographer: I am an artist.
Artist, artist, okay.
I was a sculptor and painter… but something was wrong. I didn’t like my work. And one day I took my girlfriend’s camera…
And he photographed strange things.
I used the camera as a brush or chisel: I created series of photos.
The Morgue is one of those series, right?
A girlfriend had a forensic doctor friend with access to the bodies in the morgue…
What does photographing corpses give you?
I arrived with the camera in front of the corpse, it was already incoherent to flee: I shot…
What was your first corpse like?
An eight year old girl. The forensic doctor began to dissect her with her scalpel, she removed organs…
Holy God!
I was brave. I took photos.
There will be those who judge him to be disturbed.
I am an artist.
What other artistic series have you created?
Milk and blood: two of my bodily fluids in separate transparent containers. Then I submerged objects.
Urine. Blood. Milk…
Semen, too.
No.
I photographed my ejaculations, parables of semen. I create art with my own fluids.
Aren’t you making fun of people?
That’s what politicians in the United States say, since they are the least authorized to accuse anyone of making fun of people.
Do they want to cancel him?
Before the censors were the Republicans and today they are the Democrats, university students, intellectuals, young leftists…
Does this bother you?
I’m ashamed: they set a very bad example and the only thing they will achieve is that the next generation… will cancel them!
Who have been your teachers?
Duchamp, Picasso, Dalí, Buñuel, Fellini… Their works and their humor! They are the ones who made me an artist.
Your humor, you have highlighted.
Yes, the humor. Buñuel, hard and tender at the same time. And Bob Dylan, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones… Too bad about drugs.
What happens with the drugs?
When I was twenty-something I lost seven long years of my life taking drugs.
And did you manage to quit drugs or did you relapse?
I didn’t create anything valuable at that time: I knew that that way I would never be an artist.
Was it your dream to be an artist?
Yes, I wanted to create. And that’s why I quit drugs.
What other series have you created?
Infamous: I photograph racist objects, like a postcard with a black man hanging from a tree with a white man next to him, happy.
Were there artists in your family?
My father abandoned us, and my mother, Eulalia, raised me.
Do you speak Spanish.
My mother, raised in Cuba, did not learn English. We spoke in Spanish, and she taught me how to be a good Christian.
Oh, if only his mother could see his Piss Christ!
He would like it, like everything I did.
