MH The video was shot with the help of a doctor using an endoscopic camera. It didn’t hurt at all. I was given a drug that seemed to dull the pain, but I remained completely conscious, and as my insides were being filmed— I was directing the video at the same time. I called it Corps Étranger, which means “foreign body,” because the camera is in a sense this alien device introduced from the outside. Also it is about how we are closest to our body, and yet it is a foreign territory which could, for instance, be consumed by disease long before we become aware of it. The “foreign body” also refers literally to the body of a foreigner. It is a complex work. It is both fascinating to follow the journey of the camera and quite disturbing. On one hand you have the body of a woman projected onto the floor. You can walk all over it. It’s debased, deconstructed, objectified. On the other hand it’s the fearsome body of the woman as constructed by society.

JA It also swallows you. You go into the body, both in the image but also in the installation.

MH Precisely. You enter a cylinder and you stand on the perimeter of the circular video image projected onto the floor. You feel like you are at the edge of an abyss that threatens to engulf you. It activates all sorts of fears and insecurities about the devouring womb, the vagina dentata, the castration complex.

JA In the end, was it important that it was your body?

MH It had to be my body.

JA In a weird way it’s a kind of offering. It’s an exposure. Did you feel invaded in any way?

MH I wanted the work to be about the body probed, invaded, violated, deconstructed, by the scientific eye. But when we were filming I was too concerned about getting the right images for my video to connect personally with any of these feelings.