In It will be happiness A story laced with intimate photographs, she pays tribute to those who have passed away, looks back on her childhood and her loves, celebrates female power and gently tames the passage of time.
Madame Figaro. – Was this text born from your desire to “at least keep the dust of what you tried”?
Natalie Rikil: Losing my memory haunts me, it would be a dizzying worry. I have kept traces since I was a child: I make drawings, paintings, writings, albums, I somehow record my life. It’s not just an age-related concern. my girls, for example, love looking back at the stacks of photo albums I made during my childhood, rereading the notebooks where I wrote their witty words. I don’t live my life in the past, on the contrary, but sometimes, especially in moments of doubt, it can be very positive to look back and see the path that has been taken. Think, consider. Where am I? What fears have I conquered? Memory, its volatility and transmission fascinates me and is at the heart of my work.
You mention “marriage”. Who is that? And what about the sorority?
This is the entire female heritage of my family. Essential matriarchy for me. My mother, of course, but also her four sisters, who were fundamental, each in their own way. The strength of the bond between them and their solidarity helped build me. It turns out that the men in my family have always displayed a certain vulnerability and the women have embodied power. I talk a lot about sisterhood. With five girls… My “fake sister”… and my brother.
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The book is punctuated with photographs. Can we talk about a family album?
In this book, the photos are as important to me as the words. They are not illustrations, they do not emphasize the writings, they bring an additional dimension, as music could do. I think more of a diary than a family album. This is solely my vision, my interpretation, sometimes romanticized. Everyone in the family has an experience, a point of view, the family belongs to all its members and not to the one who gives himself the freedom to talk about it. When I tell my mom Kelly’s story and add a photo of her, it’s not just any photo of a bag, it’s a living, graceful, moving object. There’s a grain to these photos that moves me.
“Bohemia is a lot more fun now than it was in the 20s.” : what do you mean by that?
The idea of ”not worrying” when you’re young is necessarily limited. We know it, it is a passage, a permission that we offer ourselves before becoming an adult, with the necessity of reason, the weight of responsibilities. When life is built, we have less to prove, letting go, bohemianism, it is delicious, because, it is true, there will be no need to pick ourselves up again, it is unlimited in time.
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Source: Le Figaro
