Translator: Maria Setti Reviewer: Ellen Maloney
I really, really, really love paper.
But this wasn't always the case.
When I first moved to Amsterdam, I was in advertising.
And I just moved everything over here and the recession hit.
Suddenly, there just wasn't anything to do.
So, instead of stressing out that I'd relocated my whole life over
for pretty much no reason, I decided to make something out of paper.
I'm not really sure why, but it just felt like a good idea at the time
and a bit better than just scrolling through Facebook.
So, I decided to set myself a little bit of a challenge.
I used to work with paper when I was younger,
and I wanted to learn more about a material that I used to work with.
I took a picture of a building I cycle past every day on the way to work,
and distorted it in Photoshop and decided to make that instead.
Instead of going crazy by making all the teeny-tiny little details,
I found it super meditative.
Even my little shaky hands were able to move things
about 2 millimeters in thickness and stick them onto all the awnings.
I was really, really enthusiastic.
So much so that all my friends encouraged me to leave advertising,
and kind of follow this weird, fuzzy feeling.
So, I ended up getting a job in a bar as a champagne waitress,
and funding an even bigger project.
Now I literally sat for hours and hours, by myself, in my living room
making even more teeny-tiny details,
to the point that I even gave myself a crick in the neck
by just kind of doing this motion for like months and months on end.
But finally I was finished, and I'd created a little short film.
So, I approached a bunch of production companies,
and hoped someone would see potential in the skills I hoped I was showing.
A few months later, of what felt like ages hitting refresh a few times on my email,
I finally heard back from somebody and they asked if I'd ever worked with...
toilet paper!
(Laughter)
I know it might not seem like the most glamorous of moves career-wise,
but I was really excited!
(Laughter)
Could I work with toilet paper?
So, actually I don't know if any of you have worked with toilet paper before,
(Laughter)
but is super, super absorbent.
(Laughter)
Which therefore meant that I didn't have to wait and watch glue dry.
It kind of stuck together by itself.
It was amazing.
So, we pitched for the job and we won it.
Because I was able to make things by hand, we were able to capture this softness.
Now I wanted to learn more about paper.
What else could paper do?
Apparently way more than I initially gave it credit for.
Which I found out when I created a sculpture that was to be submerged
in a tank filled with fluid.
This is normal paper, and you can see it getting wet, but it totally survived!
I mean, we filled fluid all up around it, and the fluid had some special properties,
but the paper completely survived.
I was blown away.
I was like, "What else can it do?"
And I then was invited to create a rocket that was to go into space!
For someone who loves paper, and also was really excited by space,
this was like a dream come true.
I went with my little rocket to Germany, we attached it to a weather balloon,
and we sent it up into the stratosphere.
Was a bit cloudy, so I was like, "Will it survive the moisture?"
But it got up to 38,000 meters, which is amazing!
(Applause)
So, I wanted to know more: What else could I do with paper?
Like toilet paper I created a feeling of softness and warmth.
Could I create the opposite kind of feeling
by working with another tactile paper?
I went to my local DIY shop and loaded my bag
with tons of different kinds of toilet paper.
Sorry, with sandpaper and then created the series
that would look a little bit random if made by paper,
but suddenly took on quite a sinister turn.
The more you thought about your interaction
with these sandpaper models,
the more it left you with the feeling that was a little bit uneasy.
I was quite interested by this.
What other kind of feelings could I play around with
just by working with a type of paper?
Could I change people's preconceived ideas about paper to bring a safeness
to the world's most famous instrument of death: the guillotine?!
Partnering with director, Hal Kirkland, we decided to set up this experiment.
Could I change how people interact with the guillotine
just by covering it with paper?
We literally built a 3.8-meter-high guillotine.
The only difference being that we'd covered ours with paper.
And we dropped a sheet of paper on people's neck,
and called the exhibition "Paper Cuts."
Because we promised nothing more deadly than a paper cut.
But obviously, we made sure it did not do this and tested on ourselves first
because we did not want to get sued.
We set the model up and waited,
and we actually had lines of people queuing up for this thing.
People said to us, "Can I go in first?"
which I'm sure has never being said in front of a guillotine before.
(Laughter)
Parents even trusted us with their children
all because we'd covered it in paper.
So, then we went from Amsterdam to London and excitingly, we were asked to exhibit
alongside the blade from the French Revolution
in a museum in Switzerland.
We obviously jumped at the chance.
We'd gone from brainstorming in a bar, by ourselves,
to suddenly being opposite the piece of history
that had inspired it in the first place;
the blade that had killed Marie Antoinette.
We knew we really wanted to create the world's most beautiful guillotine
to really juxtapose against the real, cold blade.
We were going to cover this thing in hundreds and hundreds of butterflies,
and roses and have it blossom from thorns at the bottom,
to then growing into flowers.
It was going to take up hours and hours of work,
because this thing was four meters high
and has two legs, obviously, so we were having to cover them all.
So, when I'm facing on doing something really monotonous and really laborious,
I have to watch movies or listening to podcasts
to stop myself kind of going completely crazy.
Now, this is the project that I want to talk to you about the most.
Whilst I was making all these little roses,
I was actually watching a documentary on female genital mutilation.
Female genital mutilation was something I found out about
so completely accidentally, whilst at university, around 11 years ago,
and I was researching something, which had exactly the same acronym: "FGM."
So, I typed in "FGM" thinking I was going to learn about
fraction gradient materials for a ceramics project,
and instead, a whole other world opened up.
And I think when you find out about something so shocking,
in such a way, it really really stays with you.
From that point, it's always been something
that I kind of read up about, and watch documentaries on,
with a hope to try and do something towards.
Whilst I was making some of these teeny-tiny roses.
I remember kind of looking at my hand,
then looking in the computer screen, and then looking down and being like,
"If just make a couple of little tweaks, it kind of does look like a little vulva!"
Maybe, if I can kind of use paper to calm to terror of a guillotine,
maybe I can use paper to illustrate a really difficult topic.
And a few months later, I returned back to this thought.
Female genital mutilation is really, really complicated
and I did a lot of research trying to find a way
that I could possibly join this conversation.
And whilst researching, I realized there is so much taboo surrounding
the female genitals, definitely not enough awareness about FGM,
but not really enough for awareness about genitals in general,
that two areas of concern came back.
The first area being that three million girls a year
are subjected to some form of FGM.
That's like 8,200 girls a day, which I think is even pretty hard to imagine.
Most of the time this happens without any form of anaesthesia
and can lead to lifelong health problems,
and no one knows how many girls a year die from FGM.
The other concern was about sexual education in the Western world.
So, whilst researching about FGM,
I kind of stumbled upon another load of facts
and that being that the cosmetic practice
on the genitals in females called "labiaplasty"
has risen by 16% over the last year,
and doubled in young girls under the age of 18.
Implying a kind of great lack of education on what is normal
and what isn't when it comes down to your labias.
And in fact, a normal labia can range from 0.7 to five cm in length,
which is pretty varied,
but if younger people may be looking to porn for sexual education
and being faced with a whole different opinion on what "normality" is,
then no wonder why they might be looking and feeling pressurized to change.
So, then faced with all this information,
I decided to create the project "No more cutting."
I wanted to raise awareness just about the genitals,
and get more people talking about them
and create a whole celebration of them, how they are,
in all their glory and just naturally.
Paper was the perfect material to sculpt with,
to really capture all the individual differences
that make up each one.
And also, it's really great to highlight the fragility of each one
by playing with the terms "paper" and "cutting."
Then collaborating with a new group of awesome people,
"No more cutting" became a reality.
However, it was not the easiest of beginnings of a project.
We'd need to get in real images of real genitals
for me and another girl to craft them by hand to then take pictures of,
and put them up online.
So, then I became that person trying to wonder how, or if,
I could ask my friends to possibly send me in their pictures,
(Laughter)
so, I could then build up a base to then get more people interested.
Luckily, I have some really solid friends who did me a favor and did so.
With their help the collection has now grown to 116,
but I really hope that this is just the beginning.
The health of women affects the health of people everywhere,
so all people have a stake in this conversation.
So, therefore I'd like to ask those of you who feel brave enough,
and are willing and fit the "requirements"
to go to nomorecutting.com and send me a picture.
And it's all anonymous, and we are going to keep making them
and keep growing the collection,
because the ambition is to then put on a travelling art work,
and keep getting more people talking and keep breaking down the taboos,
and raise more and more awareness about female genital mutilation.
And join the ever growing campaign to try and stop this within a generation,
and really bring this devastating practice to an end.
Thank you.
(Applause)