French Artist Camille Henrot is speaking from her studio in New York, where she just commuted in on her scooter listening to “a really good remix of Hot Chip's ‘Flutes.’” She is sitting in a furry chair wearing a baseball cap. 

Henrot’s work is multi-disciplinary, with her practice moving between film, painting, drawing, sculpture, and installation; she studied film animation at the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs. Earlier this year, she showed a series of new bronze works at Hauser & Wirth gallery in New York, titled ‘Abacus’ exploring a nascent sense of imagination and society’s system of signs. In addition to these sculptures, Henrot showed new paintings in her ‘Dos and Don’ts’ series, which feature collaged fragments, such as dental X-rays, children’s school homework, and to-do lists. 

Estelle Hoy is a writer and art critic, based in Berlin. She has just returned from London, where she read from her forthcoming book, ‘Molotov’, at the Camden Arts Centre, and autographed books at the Tate Modern. She is perched in her apartment by a window. Hoy has published several books, including an essay collection ‘saké blue’ (2024) and a novel ‘Pisti, 80 Rue de Belleville’ (2020) with After 8 Books, alongside myriad essays of art criticism and cultural analysis. 

Henrot and Hoy’s conversation is full of banter and knowing asides as they delve into their working lives and the heart of their beautiful friendship, which sparkles across our Zoom call with joy. Having worked together on various projects, including ‘Jus d’Orange’ in 2023, a book and an exhibition staged at Fondazione ICA Milano, the pair, when we speak, are in the thick of writing an operatic “Commedia dell’arte”, to premiere at the Performa Biennial in New York. They’re excited. 

Let’s begin.

Estelle Hoy: We met when Camille was living in Berlin, which is where I'm based. Camille got stuck here and hated it because she couldn't return to New York due to COVID.

Camille Henrot: I met your writing before I met you! I was wandering through rabbit holes on the internet, and found this text ‘Ça m'est égal’, which is a French expression that means ‘that’s equal to me’, but it can be used in various ways and has different possibilities. I speak English all the time, and love that someone noticed the preciousness in the French language, something I always felt but was never able to write or verbalise. The article was illustrated with a fox, one of my favourite animals. I'm wearing a fox on my cap today, in fact - it wasn't intentional. I read the essay, and it felt like someone had been digging in my head or listening to my thoughts. I had to meet this person. Like a teenage girl, I was like, ‘Is she on social media?’ I saw that she had a child the same age as mine and was living in Berlin. I’d just arrived in the city, and there was almost no source of joy in my life; it was desperate and bleak during the pandemic. Berlin is incredibly dark in winter, especially when you have no bars or friends! I wrote to Estelle, ‘Hey, I love your text!’ She replied, ‘I love your work, let's meet.’ 

Estelle: That was one long winter. I recall that you wanted to collaborate on something for 90antiope magazine, and it was an idea that we could share text and images back and forth. Then, when I came to your house in Kreuzberg, we talked for hours, and not once did we discuss the project, which is a very common trend in our friendship. 

Camille: It drives some people crazy [laughs]. 

Simon: Who does it drive crazy?

Estelle: Not us, we're fine with it, but everyone else hates it [laughs]. 

Simon: Impossible to keep you on track? 

Estelle: One of the people we work with requested that when we have meetings, Camille does it alone, and then I have a Zoom with the same people, so we don't get over-extravagant with ideas.

Simon: From your side, Estelle, tell me a little about this text that Camille really responded to.

Estelle: This was many years ago, I write a lot, so it's hard to remember. The essay explores Lauren Berlant's book ‘Cruel Optimism’, examining the capitalistic striving for things that inevitably evaporate. There was an ‘Alice in Wonderland’ thread running through it, and some pretty twisted quotes from Jacques Lacan, looking at ways we perceive signifiers and status. I think that's what Camille responded to outside of the fox. That's the animal I associate with Camille; it’s her to a tee.

Camille: 90antiope had asked us to choose different mediums; I'd do my thing, and you'd do yours, and at the end, they'd publish it together. We weren't supposed to be in contact, but we did the opposite, exchanging 400 texts on three different platforms. Estelle wrote 100 pages, and I made over 400 drawings. We thought it was a pity because they were only able to publish 10 pages for each of us, so Estelle had the idea to compile them into a book. She submitted it to curator Chiara Nuzzi at ICA Milano, and when she saw the project, she thought it had the potential to be a show, which became Jus d’Orange. It's a challenging project to describe, but Estelle, would you like to try?

Estelle: It began as a way of getting through the quagmire of COVID, and also the discovery of our friendship. The piece started in an especially nihilistic way. An Italian friend, who is by no means wealthy, had saved for a deposit for 10 years and then bought an apartment. As soon as she bought it, the roof collapsed. She was living in the rain, and was understandably melancholic. I wrote an iteration of the story involving animals, such as hares, vampires, and other peculiar creatures. I sent the piece to Camille, and she responded visually; it was like ping-pong and grew bigger than ourselves. For the show, we exhibited text alongside the paintings, as well as excerpts that we made into fortune cookies; some were archaic and truly acerbic.

Camille: It was very sarcastic, nihilistic, and some were quite surprised when they opened it! A lot of the fortunes were about death [laughs]. ‘Jus d’Orange' (Orange Juice) and a lot of the work we do has a darkness to it, and a cynical humour that comes from the darkness. When we chose this title, we aimed to draw attention to a unique acidity and bitterness that is also sweet. In a way, this is an emotional connection we share; we're easily angered by social injustice, and sensitive to our environment. A way to survive these waves of indignation, rage, and sadness is to find humour in living through existence, in small things. 

Oranges grow under the sun, and, for me in Berlin, the lack of sun was hard, and I kept thinking about how I missed vitamin C. Then it became a nickname for me, ‘Vitamin C’, because my name is Camille. We were thinking about the idea of being thirsty for energy, for blood, the idea of working at night, because Estelle writes at night—the blood orange and the vampire, ancestry, the darkness of your ancestry, dealing with that. One of the crucial references was Hélène Cixous' book ‘Vivre l’orange', a masterpiece essay in which she uses the orange as a metaphor for women. She uses the allegory of an orchard, suggesting that the idea of women writing is a secret garden, a resource for one another. This text is an invitation to take over the metaphor of the orange. 

Estelle: There's not really a separation of friendship and collaboration with Camille and me; it's intertwined, and the way we work and communicate is invariably disparate. Camille has what you might call a monkey mind, swinging from one idea to the next, to the next. For me, that's very relaxing. We might be having a conversation on Instagram about climate change, and on WhatsApp, we're discussing an exhibition we're working on. At the same time, on Signal, we're sending memes about therapy [laughter]. It's futile to distinguish between our friendship and work. Do you feel the same, Camille?

Camille: I think the same. When we first met in real life, it was relaxing because I felt like I didn't need to restrain myself; I could let my ideas flow impulsively because you were the same. There was a very fluid conversation where it didn't matter if we jumped from one topic to another, because we both understood the connection. We don't judge when jumping from a heavy topic, like disease, to buying socks [laughs].

Estelle: In general, we're not judgmental. 

Camille: We can post 22 images on an Instagram story, and we don't care if people are like, ‘what's going on’. I've never been one to stick to political content, self-promotion, or poetry, nor has Estelle. We both embrace the fluid nature of our minds. We jump around like rabbits.

Simon: Can I ask you, Camille, if you're the fox, what is Estelle?

Camille: I think she's a fox, too. [laughs]

Estelle: I got called a hummingbird once, on the outside it's all calm, but on the inside I'm frenetically whacking those wings. [laughs] We're both mischievous characters, and we embrace that. We aren't particularly interested in what people think of us; you can't be overly concerned with that. I'm speaking for myself, as Camille doesn't receive much negative feedback, but I certainly get some hate mail. [laughs]. To a degree, you need thick skin. In real life, I have butterfly-thin skin; I'm hyper-sensitive to injustice, beauty, art, sound, and words. However, when it comes to my writing, I'm thick-skinned because you can't please everyone, particularly as it pertains to politics. It's arrogant to think everyone is going to like your work. Camille is similar in that we’re obsessive when it comes to our respective art; we can focus for very long periods, to the exclusion of everything else, which is problematic because we’re unaware of things happening in our immediate environment. Camille, you're very good at being hyper-focused when you're working.

Camille: A little bit to my own hell sometimes! Three times, I missed a flight because I was reading a particular book. I no longer remember what it was. 

Estelle: You should say it's one of mine [both laugh]. Both Camille and I have been on this one train that goes around the whole city [of Berlin]. We’ve both been reading an excellent text, and then missed the stop and had to do another 45-minute trip around the city.

Camille: It happened to me that I went so far out, I was in the countryside. I got off and it was green everywhere, so I called my husband and he was like, ‘Where are you?’ Much of our friendship was built around multiple cultural misunderstandings. The expectations of mothers in Germany are high. It's different from French culture. In Germany, if you don't breastfeed, they look at you like, ‘What are you doing? You're killing your children,’ but in France, if you breastfeed, they're like, ‘What? Were you born in the 19th century?’ [laughs]

Estelle: From our experience in Berlin, there aren't many concessions made when you've had a baby, even when they're just 2 weeks old! I learned this the hard way. As artists, both of us have faced the struggles of motherhood. Camille even wrote a book about it, 'Milky Ways,' some years ago [2020-22]. There's significant pressure to present oneself as though the balance of art and motherhood is effortless. I was just at the Tate Modern, and someone said, 'I don't know how you do all this work traveling with a kid; you must have superpowers!' I said, 'No, I'm acutely exhausted, it's crazy difficult.' People should be more honest about how split they feel and how many caffeine drinks they’ve drunk. I don't know if you'd agree with me, Camille?

Camille: Sometimes I hate this expression, ‘superpowers’, and I don't like it when people congratulate me on how well I'm doing. I'd rather have people offer help. Mothers don't need compliments, they just need cash [laughs]. But I wanted to ask; I'm not familiar with your writing ritual, Estelle. Simon, you had a question about rituals, and I love rituals; I have many for almost every activity in the day. When Estelle writes, it's quite mysterious. We communicate all the time, and other people, like my husband, who's a composer, disappear for 2 hours, and his phone is completely off. Estelle, we exchange continual messages, so I know you can do multiple things at once. I wonder how you write, if you need to be alone, if there can be noise in the room?

Estelle: I'm stringent in my approach, very disciplined, and never procrastinate. I don’t move or talk. I don't want to be in anyone’s vicinity. People who write in different places, like a noisy cafe or co-working space, are wild to me. I'm in this spot all day, every day, in my universe, hyper-focused–I'm actually terrible at multitasking. I often have ideas at night, so I've to get up and write them down before they vaporize. It's so inconvenient [laughs]. When Camille and I are collaborating, we stick to a rigorous schedule, because a single week lost can propel us entirely off track. Even with the Commedia dell’arte we're working on, Camille leaves in two weeks to work exclusively on her new film for three months, so we must finalize casting, dramaturgy, and script within the next weeks. If one of us gets sick, it throws everything up in the air like confetti. 

Simon: In the same vein, Camille, when working on a show, do you have certain ways you need to work to make sure you deliver the pieces you want, in the same way Estelle was saying she thinks about an essay?

Camille: I feel like I'm not as disciplined as Estelle; some ideas come from distraction. The moment I think of conceiving a project, I have no procrastination. We're similar in that sense. The problem is having too many ideas. I thrive when I have three or four different projects, one of which is a book, one of which is a film, and one of which is an exhibition. I feel better when I can distribute where I should go with different ideas. When I have one project, I become a neurotic cat that destroys its favourite toy. I need to be distracted to perform well. When I'm drawing, I feel it's similar to writing in that I have a straightforward mind-to-hand connection. It's a process where the relationship between the idea and its production is swift. In that specific activity, I need loud music, and I have a playlist that I prepare in advance. It's complicated because it always needs to be the same, in the same order, but I get bored after a while. I have different playlists that roll in the same order, each has 200 or 300 tracks. I have my special incense burning; in a way, the music and the scent create an invisible wall around me, and I can quickly become immersed in a vortex of concentration. When I'm there, I don't see the time, and get irritated if someone interrupts me. It is similar to drugs in that sense, I can almost feel my heart. When I'm doing a film project, it's very much in my head, I'm reading a lot, talking to people on Zoom, storyboarding, trying to convince people to do what I want [laughs], that's where the fox comes in! 

Simon: Both of you, how did you come to where you are in your careers? Where did this creative thread emerge from? Where did it begin?

Camille: As a child, as soon as I could hold a pen, I was drawing constantly. So much so, my mum kept buying printer paper, the big stack, and I almost needed one a day, for drawing cartoons. I spent a lot of time in front of the TV. I'm of the generation where no one told us screens are bad, so I was in front of it nonstop, drawing. I was trying to imitate the TV, all the different steps of a movement or a story. When I went to school and had to spend one hour on a drawing, I panicked. The idea of spending so much time on just one thing felt boring and annoying. 

My mum was very crafty; she was a taxidermist, but also an artist, creating engravings for artists' books and poets. She made Christmas decorations, cut wallpaper to create a fresco in our room, and painted snakes and parrots in the corridor. We had many animals, so the home was very stimulating, creatively. I was fortunate as an artist because I knew how to draw a horse very quickly. There are a lot of things you don't learn in art school that I learnt already, so when I made it into art school, I had a lot of skills.

Simon: Estelle, I read in an interview that you were a serious child. It seems quite hard to imagine.

Estelle: [laughs] I’m serious about work and social justice, mainly. I don’t come from a family of writers and artists, so I started writing in a weird way. When I was young, I was part of a government-run scientific longitudinal study for children affected by chemical warfare, and in this instance, the caustic defoliant Agent Orange, the nerve agent that causes physical deformities and mental malfunctioning in humans. Being in the study meant I had to journal daily, documenting thoughts, food intake, etc., even one grape. In exchange for being a lab rat, I got free dental care, which was just as well, since I was like a shark, many teeth, none of them helpful. My family wasn’t in a financial position to have dental coverage, so as insane as it seems now to have been studied, I’m also happy. My teeth are bangin’ these days. [laughs] When I was eleven, I won a prize for a story I’d written and was asked to go to the university to read to the students, which terrified me. The piece was actually rubbish, but what intrigued them about it was that the subject was chemical warfare — an unusual theme for a child. Other entries were about days at the beach and pool parties, and there I was ruining the vibe for everyone. I still do this—bad habits die hard. [laughs]

Camille: I didn't know the story of the extra teeth. I love it. I also had special teeth; my canines were very pointy, and the dentist asked if they should be made less pointy, but I resisted. As a child, I was bullied, and biting was very effective [laughs]. One thing I love about Estelle is when she starts complimenting someone, you know she'll throw something a bit nasty in there [laughs]. For example, in a recent interview in Apartamento, she started talking about rat poison right away, and I was like… [laughs]. 

Estelle: I likened Camille to rat poison in the very first sentence, so it can only go up from there [laughs]. Where I'm from, the meaner you are to someone, the more you adore them. I'm not sure if it's an Australian thing, but if you're snarky with your friends, it's because you love them more than other people.

Camille: I think French people are like that, too. It means that the people you love trust you, and you trust them enough to take constructive criticism. In the United States, you can't speak your mind. If people ask your opinion, they don't want your opinion; they just want you to say ‘awesome.’ [laughs].

Simon: I suspect neither of you is keen on the word ‘awesome.’

Camille: I hate this word. I never say it.

Estelle: Just yesterday, I messaged Camille, ‘Maybe I'm paranoid, but everyone was so nice to me in London, I was suspicious.’ I couldn't tell if it was a social facade or genuine sincerity. I'm accustomed to the culture here [in Berlin]. If a German doesn't want to come to your party, they’ll say, ‘I don't want to come to your party,’ they won't make convoluted excuses. It's very refreshing, you know where you stand!  I'll cry afterwards, of course [laughs].

Simon: I was thinking about words versus visuals, you're both multidisciplinary in the way you work and think, but can you both say a little bit about how words and visuals work for you, together, separately, when you're being creative?

Camille: Words are fascinating to me. I'm interested in words I don't fully understand. That's why I like Estelle's style. She uses a lot of words that aren't English; sometimes they're French, Italian, or German, and I’m interested in misunderstandings in general – it's very fertile ground. When I have an idea for a painting or a drawing, I often write keywords, but they're not descriptive of what I want to do. I've noticed that if I describe what I want to do, I don't feel motivated because it's prescriptive, like a to-do list, so I'm not interested. But if I write down lists of intriguing words that are triggering… 

I started to realise how words are like a tree with many branches, as to where you can potentially go. My notes are usually a list of words, not sentences. So, if I need to write an essay, it's quite challenging. ‘Milky Ways’ was interesting but very consuming in terms of energy. I'm a perfectionist, and I always have more ambition than capacity. I guess that's how we get along so well. Estelle's style of writing is incredibly visual, in a way that's not direct. She uses images, but it's philosophical in the way [Michel de] Montaigne [philosopher] is. Montaigne might be talking about horse carriages, but actually, he's talking about the frailty of civilization. Estelle is discussing how oranges grow, but she's also referring to the fragility of our dreams and our expectations for a better life being shattered in an instant. This is something that connects us. 

Simon: Estelle, I think that's a good way to describe your work, that the words are visual.

Estelle: Yes, it's the inverse of Camille's. Even in her ‘Do's and Don’ts' series, she uses pages from etiquette books, and in general, we're both passionate about literature, philosophy, and politics, so we have a lot of words in common. I'm a very visual person as well, and I love to write about art, whether or not I like it. It's inconsequential to me whether I like an artist's work; I want to talk about the glittery ideological deviations that are born of it. Camille's work is sensational; in that sense, it's inspiring to work with her material. In another context, I might be commissioned to write about a specific image or [art] show, and I’ll write down words or phrases that spring to mind when looking at it. On my notes app, there’s a litany of unhinged notes. 

Simon: Shall we talk about this project - an operatic “Commedia dell'arte” for New York's Performa Biennial?

Camille: To be transparent, I don't like performance in general, I don't remember being enthusiastic about an art performance, ever. I feel like it's pretending to be neutral, but it's the most staged thing; it's supposed to be more ‘natural’ than theatre, but it's more artificial because it's pretending to be natural. I started trying to roll back to the last time I attended a live performance that I liked. Of course, that would be a music performance, but excluding that, I thought it would be a Commedia dell'arte puppet show. It's a long way back in childhood. There's something about the Commedia dell'arte characters that I found intriguing because none of them are conveyed positively. I began looking online to research Commedia dell'arte, and I found it fascinating: established characters, such as doctors or landlords, are often portrayed in the worst light. The ones that are made fun of the most.

Nowadays, some of this art has been lost, but it brings relief and a much-needed atmosphere of community. It's a sense of camaraderie, but also just the idea of having a laugh. I love burlesque; the reason to laugh is more based on the grotesque, and it's often a simple mechanism. Somebody falling, missing a step, getting enraged for no reason. One of the inspirations for the script is the British television series 'Absolutely Fabulous,' which remains one of the funniest and most creative comedy shows. I feel like I don't see that [kind of] humor enough, so I wanted to do something I'd like to see myself do, even if I'm not good at it. 

Estelle is very funny. In her writing, she has this sort of underdog vendetta spirit, which is a bit Commedia dell’arte. So, we started to think about a Commedia dell'arte set in New York because a lot of American people don't know the traditional characters of Harlequin, Pulcinello, Pulcinella, and Pierrot. 

I've always been interested in how popular culture is being reinvented and reinterpreted. I did a film about Frankenstein called Psychopompe, and my first film Deep Inside was about porn and horror. I wanted to revisit my early interests and examine how popular culture continually reinvents itself. The further away and more grotesque it is, the closer it is to social realities; in a way, it allows us to talk about things we wouldn't be able to address directly. Our new collaboration is a comedy about paying the rent, something nobody wants to hear about because it's a painful topic. We have this funny anecdote: We tried to call the play, ‘Rent is Due’, and at some point, we were contacted with, ‘Wait, I don't think we can keep this title because every time we email someone with the subject-line, ‘Rent is Due’, they delete the message.’ [both laugh] 

I want the play to be based on characters. When I draw, I'm not so interested in the core furniture and landscape; I'm primarily interested in bodies, costumes, and the way people move. I love movement, I love rhythm, I love music. So it needs to be a weird musical.

Simon: It sounds amazing! I don't think people talk about Ab Fab enough.

Camille: I totally agree. The young generation, you talk about it, and they don't know it. I was planning to dress as Patsy [Stone, played by Joanna Lumley] for Halloween, and I thought it would be so easy and funny, but nobody in my neighbourhood knew who Patsy was.

Simon: Ok, from Patsy to… What do you think art really means? What is art?

Estelle: It's a decision.

Camille: I was trying to think what I would say to this. In short, I would say it has something to do with free will. I also think it’s the opposite of what you do. Its possibilities. Art, specifically in its language, in its technique, has a right, even some kind of duty, to ambivalence and complexities.

Simon: How would you define beauty?

Estelle: Can I give the same answer as before: it's a decision? [laughs]. 

It's a verb, not a noun. Everyone has this conception of beauty as a noun or adjective, but it's a verb; you decide what is beautiful, and you determine where and how you extract it. Even in bleak, traumatic experiences, you can distill beauty and adjudicate what is precious. 

So, concisely: Beauty is a verb?

Camille: I would say something a bit weird: it's truth. It would be nice to ask everyone to show you an image of something beautiful: children, adults, and old people. I think in all those images, there would be truth. Every mise-en-scène has some truth in it. I think of beauty as what is not ugly. I think that's easier. I feel like lies, distortion of reality, and manipulation are the ugliest things. For me, I have physical disgust for people who are manipulative or lie, I can almost smell it, it gives me nausea. It's a very strong physical reaction.