M.-O.B.: Which is often the case with a public commission…
O.S.: Yes, but less so nowadays. For example, with commissions given to César, the artist was able to express himself. In the modern sculptures that I've seen in France, you usually sense that the artist controlled the concept from start to finish. They must have been shown the space they were to fill, like they do with me in Japan.

M.-O.B.: So, in Japan, they showed you the site they'd chosen and allowed you to do what you wanted?
O.S.: Yes. They gave me carte blanche, so I accepted. Of course, out of politeness I did a drawing, a sketch, to show them what I was going to do.

M.-O.B.: Do you have a precise vision of what you want to achieve?
O.S.: Yes, otherwise I'd dither, I'd change. That's why I don't draw. If you draw, the work is already finished. You're forced to come back to your drawing. However, when you sculpt directly, you leave the work some freedom. You can get a pleasent surprise: the subject moves around in your head and you can control it from A to Z.

M.-O.B.: What strikes about what you've said, is your rejection of the system…
O.S.: It's not a rejection. Rejection is knowing something and saying, "I don't want that." Me, I don't see the system. From time to time echoes reach me. That makes me stronger in my determination, in my choice. I'm not joining in. Sometimes this attitude is a bit hard for somebody who isn't prepared for it. I catch the odd hostile look. If I join the system, I'll get sick. So I prefer not to join it.

M.-O.B.: I wasn't thinking entirely of the social system. You told me, "Life has no logic." Maybe it's not a rejection, but a feeling, a conviction that things don't work out according to a preconceived pattern?
O.S.: It's the same sort of thing. You mustn't reject the social system, because you have to live in society. But I accept it less and less. To accept a system is already to have an organised life. Reference points are established and you have to obey the rules. You can very easily be outside the systems, even on an artistic level, not join in.
For example, in the world of art there are set-ups that you have to respect. After that, you may or may not be recognised, but you have the satisfaction of not being left out in the cold. If you tell yourself this will bring more disadvantages than advantages, I think it's better to stop, but without being aggressive. Seen from outside that may appear to be a rejection of the system.

M.-O.B.: You say that you don't draw, unless you have to…
O.S.: Yes. I can draw, but I'd forgotten I knew how to draw. It was my favourite subject at primary school. I did the drawing very easily for the Japanese. But it doesn't interest me much.

M.-O.B.: When you moved from small, articulated sculptures to big ones, when you created the Nubas, how many pieces had you destroyed before they stopped you?
O.S.: I never kept count of the sculptures I destroyed. It was one of the things I did instinctively, because they weren't what I wanted. But it seems so natural to me to do what pleases me. If I don't like a work, even if people think the opposite, I must have the courage to destroy it.
For example, I've just destroyed a horse from the Indian series, the one with its head raised, because it was too heavy, too flabby looking. It didn't express what I was feeling. That could happen again before I finish making the Indian series.

M.-O.B.: Your inspiration, your scenes, do they spring from a revulsion against accepted ideas?
O.S.: Some people don't like them, too bad. Some people like me, so much the better. That is not what drives me. When I show affection to somebody, I hope he'll know that it's meant sincerely.

M.-O.B.: You don't like hypocrisy…
O.S.: I think what I hate most, is hypocrisy and gratuitous malice. You don't have to be nasty because you don't like someone. But it may be true, as you say, that I do feel revulsion. When I come across hypocrisy, I avoid it, I try not to see. I assume this distance, because that's where I find tranquillity.

M.-O.B.: Is that where you find art, too? This tranquillity seems to correspond to some personal philosophy, a retreat from the world…
O.S.: I don't live withdrawn from the world, because I like to see people. Some people need to have lots of others around them to chat about this and that. Maybe they're scared to be face to face with themselves, so that must help them. Me, on the contrary, I seek solitude, that's where I find fulfilment. I never get bored when I'm alone.

M.-O.B.: In short, you rely more on your own demands than on those of others…
O.S.: Yes, and it was already that way when I was young. It's strange, I never acquired this confidence as I grew older. I've always had enormous confidence in myself, it's a permanent thing. To such a point, that when I was a kid, if anybody asked me to catch the moon, I'd put on my slippers and go and try to. As I get older I still set the bar high and I challenge myself.

M.-O.B.: It's a sort of mixture of, or alternation between, security - maybe pride - and modesty…
O.S.: I find it very useful to tell myself after I've done something, "If you did it, then somebody else can." Apparently, when Roman soldiers returned victorious, the slave who carried the laurel wreath above their heads would repeat to them, "Don't forget: Glory is ephemeral." I think that's fantastic.

M.-O.B.: But you don't go so far as to believe that anybody could make your sculptures?
O.S.: But why not? There are really talented people about now who go home, try their hand at sculpture and, like I used to, don't show them.

M.-O.B.: Certainly… You aren't the only artist in the world.
O.S.: Exactly, you mustn't tell yourself that you're unique. There are people who died doing their jobs and later they were discovered to be poets. They weren't lucky enough to get recognition, or didn't want it, selfishly.

M.-O.B.: When did you start thinking of yourself as an artist?
O.S.: After work and on Sundays I used to make sculpture. Then I realised that, even when I wasn't doing it, I was thinking about it. In Montreuil, I used to make sculpture in my office, between patients. A transformation was taking place, it was turning into an activity that was starting to take up my time.

M.-O.B.: When you started, did you already have a philosophy, a conception of art that was developing at the same time?
O.S.: I think I acquired my philosophy of art later on, when I decided to move from a sensible - if I can use that word - job, to become an artist. But it's not so straightforward. The total change is that when I was a phsyio I was paid. As an artist I don't expect that. First, that's very satisfying. I could not sell things and go on sculpting. The notion of money has completely disappeared.

M.-O.B.: Have you worked in this way since childhood, since your youth? Have you sought an "accessible" mode of expression?
O.S.: Yes, and I'm so afraid of people not understanding me, or of misinterpreting what I say, that I speak very directly. It's the same thing with art: I could never have done abstract work, or else I would have gone into decorative style.

M.-O.B.: Don't you think there can be a certain spirituality in abstract art?
O.S.: I don't know. When abstract artists line up colours, when they draw shapes, they must certainly think about it deeply before they start. Even if you do something that only one person likes, that's already something.

M.-O.B.: I find you somewhat contradictory: you want to practise your art as a language designed to be understood and you haven't tried to show it. You've had to be practically forced to show it.
O.S.: You have to allow your views to mature. Maybe I wasn't ready. It was a time for maturing, I wasn't in any hurry. I knew that I would have to show my work, but I didn't know where. I had friends who came to see it and that was enough for me. It wasn't very important to me.

M.-O.B.: What's the relationship between your life and your work?
O.S.: When I succeed with something, I'm really happy. My life is governed by that. When I was a physiotherapist I knew how to get where I had to go, but now I'm always groping.

M.-O.B.: Was there a moment when you decided that your life would be determined by your work as an artist?
O.S.: No, up to now my life hasn't been determined by my art. It's a whole, which creates balance, tranquillity. I have the good luck to be where I am without constraint. Sculpture is the most important thing in my life, but it's not the only choice.

M.-O.B.: The 60's and 70's were marked by the debate: modernism or tradition. Did it leave a mark on you?
O.S.: I was aware ofß it, but I didn't feel involved like I am today. What is strange is that those who were the most aggressive didn't have anything to say about it.
Art is now very widespread and I get the impression that people aren't afraid to say what they like or what they don't like.

M.-O.B.: A journalist said of your sculpture that you were moving from Giacometti to Rodin…
O.S.: In fact, when he said that, I said to myself, "you know, he's right". Not in technique, but in development: a skeleton that I then cover with muscle.

M.-O.B.: You admire the works of Rodin and Giacometti. Are they models for you?
O.S.: Not just them. I also like what Bourdelle, Maillot, Camille Claudel did. They're not examples, just artists that I like.

M.-O.B.: When you were in Paris, did you go and see sculpture?
O.S.: Yes, I went as often as I could.

M.-O.B.: What do you like about Giacometti?
O.S.: The stripping down, I think. And the long, slender quality of his work. He produces big sculptures with extraordinary feet. If it were just a question of stability, he could easily have added a plinth and given them normal feet. He exaggerates and he strips down. And he produces very vocal sculptures. It really is pure genius.

M.-O.B.: What about Bourdelle?
O.S.: The mass.

M.-O.B.: And with Maillot, is it mass, too?
O.S.: Yes, it's so difficult to put down a mass and make it live. And then there's the playful side to Maillol. You get the impression he doesn't take himself seriously.

M.-O.B.: Do you recognise something of yourself in them?
O.S.: No, not in any of them, out of intellectual honesty. Because I don't think it would have been right to imitate them. When I look at the sculptures of Rodin, Maillol or Giacometti, I'm like everyone else, a spectator.

M.-O.B.: And when people say you're the "Rodin of Dakar"?
O.S.: That's rubbish. Because Rodin is unique, just like Bourdelle. I put that down to intellectual laziness, because it's easy to put a label on something.

M.-O.B.: What do like so much about Rodin?
O.S.: His audacity. You have to exaggerate and Rodin exaggerates. If you know about anatomy and you study the Thinker, for example, you see his forearm is shorter than his upper arm and his shoulder muscle comes down very low. He did it deliberately, because the sculpture wouldn't have had the same force if all the anatomical details had been in the right place.

M.-O.B.:They say that exaggeration is one of the components of art, but not the only one. Could you tell me what constitutes art for you?
O.S.: When I talk about exaggeration, it's principally from the point of view of technique. I don't include exaggeration in my initial concept. It's when I'm face to face with the work that I exaggerate a little to give it force. But what is absolutely essential, is that hunger to do what you have to do.

M.-O.B.: I don't have your knowledge of anatomy, but it strikes me in your sculpture… For example, here (in the studio in 1998) there's a man on the ground with one leg bent and the other straight; the straight leg is hardly any longer than the bent one. It forms a sort of triangle on the ground. One leg is shorter than the other, but we don't notice it. Is that a mistake in anatomy?
O.S.: Do you mean the soldier? It's an optical illusion. Sometimes you can be mistaken. When you stretch out one leg and bend the other, you do get the impression that one part is smaller than the other.

M.-O.B.: Even if you exaggerate you still respect proportions. You say, "Art is exaggeration, but not only exaggeration". Do you control this exaggeration from the start?
O.S.: You mustn't get obsessed by proportions. We often say of someone, "he's a shorty", or he's "leggy", "his legs go on for ever". All that is what makes the man. So we can take the liberty of giving him more power. I think Rodin understood that very well. Take his Balzac, you might think it was just a rough, but it's extraordinary with that immense head.

M.-O.B.: You sense the body in the Balzac…
O.S.: Yes. The people who commissioned it didn't want it because the face is tortured, but it's really one of his finest sculptures. It's not an academic sculpture, it doesn't obey the rules. Rodin hasn't given it an expression, but something extraordinary leaps out of this sculpture. The way he's holding his cloak, his hair, his head thrown back.

M.-O.B.: You've seen the roughs of the Balzac in the Rodin museum: he models the body, then moves on to this enveloped form. It's rather like the way you work.
O.S.: Yes. When I decide to do something, I carry it through to the end. The new series (The Little Bighorn) won't be like my early works. There'll be some roughness in what I'm going to do, because I don't like smooth things anymore.

M.-O.B.: What led you to prefer roughness and drop smooth surfaces?
O.S.: It's an evolution. Previously, I never left any "holes". The Little Bighorn series represents dramatic scenes, you can't make them smooth. I don't know how, but there will be a dialogue and a force between the characters. Not only in their looks but also in their postures. I have no idea what sort of finish I shall give them, but I know that it'll be different, more daring in the colours.

M.-O.B.: How long have you been using this "burnt" technique?
O.S.: Since the Little Bighorn series. My new technique is much faster. Previously, I would make sausages, I joined them up with a big needle that I'd made. I skewered them on a steel wire to fix them. Then I had to wait till it started to dry and I would make the forms. But as it dried it slumped, it was rather complicated to do. But now, I burn, I create the forms and it expands; but it takes a very short time. Then I go back to the old technique, that is, modelling the definitive forms.

M.-O.B.: When you were in Paris, did you go and look at African art in the Musée de l'Homme?
O.S.: Yes, I did that in the 50's. For example you could see the costumes of African kings.

M.-O.B.: Do you feel, because of certain aspects of your personality, that you are the torchbearer of African art?
O.S.: Torchbearer, no, I don't think that would be modest.

M.-O.B.: Do you believe that one doesn't carry on history, but that you start everything from zero?
O.S.: The essential thing is to belong to a civilisation, an ethnic group, to a country and to do what inspires you. Modestly I say that I do what interests me. I'm lucky because people are interested enough to talk about it, but when I'm gone, somebody else will do something different.

M.-O.B.: I was struck by your relationship with the cinema. I've heard you say, "When you see a mid-shot, or a close-up of a head, even if the head is fifteen feet high, you still know that it's a head. So, in the end, proportion is meaningless". You have a great knowledge of anatomy, relatively deceptive because it's precise. It masks the liberty you take with proportions, and it may well come from your film culture…
O.S.: The fact I worked on the human body has given me freedom. I know how far to go without constructing a monster, without disfiguring. I know the limits. Someone who doesn't know the human body, who only has a theoretical knowledge of proportion, has no freedom. I learnt about anatomy not in order to make sculpture, but in order to treat the human body. I know there is no uniformity in human morphology. I know that a student from the Beaux Arts, for whom the "aesthetic" is the principal element, doesn't dare to venture into this territory. The fact I was a physiotherapist has been a great help, it put me at ease with the human body.

M.-O.B.: You say that it freed you from the Greek canon.
O.S.: Yes, it's the same thing, from the academic canon.

M.-O.B.: Don't you like the Greek sculptures in the Louvre?
O.S.: Not much. There are some I like. Maybe it's that search for perfection that makes seem cold.

M.-O.B.: You also say that if you know how to make a human body, you have no problem making the bodies of animals.
O.S.: The human body is a structure. It's the most difficult thing to produce because it has no logic. Look at the ear, the auricle, it's so tortuous; you could hear with just a single hollow. A man or a woman's chest, the volumes, the hand, you don't find them in animals. The human is very complicated to do. Even the spine. A human is flat and rounded at the same time. He has a furrow running through the middle of his body and on either side a sort of hump. Human muscles are especially complicated to do. If you forget to emphasis a certain muscle in a movement, then that movement is ruined.

M.-O.B.: Is that what you learnt from re-educating wasted muscles for example?
O.S.: Yes, because you feel. When I was at school I learnt analytic anatomy. You had to know which muscles work when you sit or when you walk. Which ones are at rest and which are at semi-rest. I think that was essential for me. Analytic anatomy enabled me to understand better this conflict between a muscle that's in contraction and one that's at rest.

M.-O.B.: You are always trying to convey movement. Even the very hieratic woman braiding, you still feel she is in motion.
O.S.: You do, she has her hands raised, her gaze is directed, she's not sitting, she's not standing, so, necessarily, she's active. Even if it's her hands that are working.

M.-O.B.: Is the cinema the model of storytelling for you?
O.S.: Above all it's entertainment. You go to the cinema to be entertained.

M.-O.B.: Would you say that art, sculpture, are entertainment?
O.S.: Yes, in the best sense of the word, entertainment that takes you away from what you usually see, or feel, and sometimes even imagine. If you can create that, it's extraordinary.

M.-O.B.: Is it a form of curiosity?
O.S.: When you see the audience come out with tears in their eyes, it goes beyond curiosity. It's so difficult to define art. I don't even know if those who practise it can grasp it. Because the perception of art varies so much with the individual that you can't give a precise definition.

M.-O.B.: But you think that emotion plays an integral part…
O.S.: It's the beginning. There'd be something missing from art which couldn't provoke emotion, I think.

M.-O.B.: Were you moved by all the subjects you've dealt with, all the sculptures you've made?
O.S.: Yes, by all of them. First there's the emotion caused by the creative process, then by the finished work.

M.-O.B.: You've mentioned you would like to write a script…
O.S.: I'd like to film miniature sculptures and tell a story.

M.-O.B.: Do you have an idea for the story?
O.S.: I have so many stories brewing, without beginnings or endings. Stories that don't last very long. To make a feature length animated film you need means and time. What I like are little stories, like the one in the extract you can see in the film about me.

M.-O.B.: Which you directed. It's the only one you've done. Are these things you'd like to return to or not?
O.S.: The door remains open. I shall make some miniatures, certainly for animation. If I animate them, there must be a story, crazy perhaps, but which stands up.

M.-O.B.: A story like a cartoon?
O.S.: Not necessarily. A humorous story about everyday life. But that's a long way from my current preoccupations. It's a fact that, because I don't write anything down, I don't really remember my stories. In the end, what interests me is what I'm doing: sculptures that tell their own story, without me having to interfere.

M.-O.B.: Have you always made sculpture?
O.S.: I've never stopped. I knew that I had certain themes to exploit. But because I moved around so much, at various times, they sometimes got put aside. As soon as I got some peace, was settled somewhere, I would start sculpting again.

M.-O.B.: That's an important change in the way you work, the move from carving limestone to modelling…
O.S.: No, not that important. People often ask questions about the difference between carving and modelling. All the great sculptures have gone through a modelling stage, starting with plaster, or sometimes clay. Then they cast in bronze, even those who worked with Carrera marble.

M.-O.B.: Is there a difference between carving marble and modelling plaster or clay? Between the resistance of the material and creation of volume from nothing?
O.S.: Every technique has its consequences. A person who carves, carves what is already there. That requires great skill, so as not to remove more than is necessary. The carver has a block in front of him. If he leaves it there, in a hundred, a thousand years, Nature will have sculpted it. And you can see she creates some lovely shapes.
But a person who models starts with nothing. It's a void. At the end he must have a sculpture in front of him.
The difference between them seems artificial to me. Even the greatest sculptor starts with nothing, I mean something that doesn't look like Man. It's by association, by explosion that the shapes are formed. As at the creation of Man: first there's earth, then an explosion and, little by little, you see a shape, a head, something that vaguely resembles a hand and so on. I think the tortuous branches that Nature has created represent perfection. You can't try to compete with that. That's why you must remain modest.

M.-O.B.: Was it when you stopped working with limestone that you started searching for your own material?
O.S.: Yes, I think it must have started about that time. I'm not really sure any more. Maybe I did some modelling with clay, but I can't be sure, because it all happened so naturally. I did some bas-reliefs.

M.-O.B.: You showed a bas-relief at the first Festival of Negro Arts in Dakar. You say it was the head of a Moor. Was it a portrait?
O.S.: Yes, it was a portrait, but not the portrait of a particular person. I gave it to a friend, but somebody stole it.

M.-O.B.: Was it a bas-relief?
O.S.: Yes, I did three of them.

M.-O.B.: Didn't you keep any of the things carved from limestone?
O.S.: That's going back more than fifty years, it's a long time ago. I think the last one was a sailor, because I remember the colour of his forehead. I remember I tried hard to make it shine, I put some colouring on it.

M.-O.B.: Were you already using colour when you were carving limestone?
O.S.: On some pieces at least. Not on the early ones, but later I wanted to paint them.

M.-O.B.: Did you continue with polychromy when you started modelling?
O.S.: Yes, but out of necessity then. I continued with polychromy because I thought it would allow me to go further, to make eyes brown or blue, it would have been a shame not to play with colours in the face, clothes or body. My material works so well with colour. It can take shabby colours.

M.-O.B.: When did you start using reclaimed materials to "produce" your own material?
O.S.: When I was a child I used products that were something like glue, but they didn't hold. When I wanted to finish a sculpture I started using neoprene glue. I used the strongest glue, but at a certain point I had to remove it, because it couldn't take stress, heat. I started reclaiming stuff because I didn't have the means to buy the glue to make large volumes, and the result would have been poor. The glue you buy in Africa is not good quality.
So I started reclaiming things, letting them break up, mixed with other products, but it didn't happen straight away, I had to experiment a lot. I had the patience to wait till it happened.

M.-O.B.: But the story of your materials - because there's not just one sort of material in all your sculptures - reflects a process that governs your life… you let things mature, it matures, it expresses itself. Is there a fundamental motion in things that must be allowed to act?
O.S.: Yes, you must have confidence in evolution.

M.-O.B.: Would that be the "philosophy" - if I can use that word - of your product?
O.S.: Yes, in effect, because it wasn't obvious at the start. I had no reference point; nobody had done it. But I think the best thing I did was to let time pass, that's how, at the end of four years, I found myself with a workable product.

M.-O.B.: Do you still use a product that you leave to evolve over three or four years…
M.-O.B.: What I mean is that I constantly reconstitute it, I never use it all up in one go. So there's always some left over. When I see it's getting low, I add some more and wait for a time. That reduces the maturing period.

M.-O.B.: It's a bit like dough for a baker?
O.S.: Yes, it's like mother of vinegar. It's hard to get going, but then I manage it. When I see I'm getting low, I add some and wait, but not for so long.

M.-O.B.: I imagine you must have a stock, because you're going to need a huge amount of this product for the Indians…
O.S.: I've thought of that. Even when I'm gone, there'll be some left and it might be useful to someone.

M.-O.B.: But you never tell anyone how it's made, that's part of the mystery.
O.S.: That's part of the game.

M.-O.B.: But do you really know yourself?
O.S.: No, and there's an element of truth when I tell reporters, "it's not definite", because I add things and I take things away.

M.-O.B.: If you've been cultivating your "mother of vinegar" since 1969 by adding or removing ingredients, then you can't know what's in it now?
O.S.: No. Now look. 1969 is when the mixture started. But the barrels I'm using here now date from May 1987. The first barrel dates from May 27, 1987.

M.-O.B.: How do you know the exact date?
O.S.: Because I wanted to know how long it matured, so I remembered the date, so I could decide the period: three months, six months, a year.

M.-O.B.: So you really calculated, planned, almost like you would plan a child.
O.S.: No, I just wrote the date on the barrel with chalk.

M.-O.B.: So it's more like the production of wine or alcohol, where you calculate maturity by the length of time.
O.S.: Long before then I started working with the materials that were at hand. I really left it to soak and I didn't make the Nuba series with this product. I think I started taking it from the barrels when I began the Masai and the Zulus.
Now I use jute sacking that they keep potatoes in, but the ingredients remain the same. Maybe if I tried more noble materials, production would be faster, but I'm not sure that, over time, it would keep so long.

M.-O.B.: The grey matter that we see on your horses, is that the product?
O.S.: No, that's the melted plastic matter.

M.-O.B.: And you put the product on last?
O.S.: Yes, it's the exterior. I use the product to make the faces, colour the clothing and especially to harmonise and finish off the reliefs.

M.-O.B.: Like a final layer…
O.S.: Yes, it's the final full spot.

M.-O.B.: And that is what is coloured in the mass in fact? Hasn't the product ever damaged your hands? You apply it by hand, without gloves.
O.S.: Yes, it stings. Especially if I work for a long time.

M.-O.B.: But isn't it a relatively harmful product?
O.S.: No, I don't think so, I've been handling it since 1970. It could be if you used it twenty-four hours a day in an unventilated space.

M.-O.B.: Will you wear gloves one day?
O.S.: No, I don't think so. With sculpture I like to feel, it's nicer to feel the material.

M.-O.B.: Have you asked yourself the question, "what is art, what is art for me?". Have you read about the subject, like you read about the reincarnation of the soul?
O.S.: Reincarnation is a progress, a path that wise men indicate to you. But art is a sensibility, so nobody can tell you how you feel. I haven't asked myself the question because things evolved little by little towards a sort of necessity. I didn't need to calculate, it's a normal progress in my life.

M.-O.B.: What is there in the design of your house, through its architecture, that corresponds to your philosophy of life and art? Visitors are all struck by the meditation room… It's at the top: lower down you have the everyday rooms, which themselves overlook the physical exercise room…
O.S.: I have a deep faith. Before, I was an atheist, basically. That's to say, one who didn't talk about it, or boast about it. But it was a paradoxical sort of atheism, because when I was working in hospitals and, for example, I saw a child I was treating and who was going to die, I revolted against God. Well, that was already recognising Him. When I started sculpting, some people told me my work seemed to be alive. I replied that every divine creature has greater value than a sculpture because it is independent. The meditation room must be the most beautiful in the house. When you offer something, you try to offer the best there is. So I chose the most beautiful room in the house.

M.-O.B.: So you can offer a person who comes here absolute solitude, a private moment with himself?
O.S.: With himself, with God, according to his beliefs. Nothing's excluded. It wouldn't worry one bit if somebody came to pray on the mat, or to read the Bible, or just simply came. On the contrary, I wouldn't want this room to be trivialised. That's why I always ask people to take their shoes off; it creates a feeling of respect. Whoever goes in there has to feel protected, on the condition that he respects the place. There will never be furniture there and no one will sleep there. I don't require people to believe in order to go in, but whether they do or not, it should have a value for each one of them.

M.-O.B.: Are you a believer?
O.S.: Yes, even more so because it came to me gradually. It's not out of fear. Some people start to believe when they're ill, when they get old or closer to death. My faith was born as I moved along.

M.-O.B.: Did you have a religious upbringing?
O.S.: Yes, in the Muslim faith.

M.-O.B.: You were born in Dakar. Isn't there an animistic tradition here?
O.S.: Here animism gets mixed up with faith, especially the Muslim faith, but also the Catholic. You have amulets, you make incantations when you're ill; all that belongs to animism. The barrier isn't really watertight.

M.-O.B.: You say that "belief came little by little"… like art, like making sculpture?
O.S.: Yes, because you're always trying to imitate God, knowing you can never equal him.

M.-O.B.: So for you, "creation" is not just a vain word, you imitate the creation, you feel you are a creator?
O.S.: That word covers a lot of things. For me, creation is when you achieve something that others can't. That's my definition, whatever it is you do.
But it's a bit like a child trying to wear his father's shoes. I think God must smile when he sees us, jumping about, when he sees us imitating. It's more imitation than creation. We imitate because it gives us pleasure, because we penetrate the mystery a little.

M.-O.B.: What mystery?
O.S.: I'm talking about sculpture. Right now, I don't know what faces the Indians are going to have, that's a mystery. I created them, but it's still mysterious. They won't begin to represent anything until I give them faces, when they start looking at each other, when their gestures are directed towards the others. I'm at the rough stage, it's an exciting stage. When I create a face that looks at me, or looks at somebody else, I say to myself, "he looks nasty", or "he's got a nice face". It happens, I don't have a previously fixed view, I don't have a preconceived image.

M.-O.B.: And when you do this do you feel you are imitating God?
O.S.: No I never thought of doing that. Maybe I was curious to see how far one could go in reproducing a human face. But I can't go any further. Even if I could give them a soul, I wouldn't because that doesn't interest me.

M.-O.B.: You couldn't "give them a soul" and you knew it. Is that what led you to believe in God?
O.S.: Something had started moving within me, sculpture reinforced it. I started to search for what happened to the soul after death. I found it really sad that people's souls, which have an intellectual quality, should disappear with their bodies. I couldn't bear that idea.

M.-O.B.: Was that what inspired you - the loss of people you held in esteem?
O.S.: No, it was a stage in my life. It's the Cartesian mind that makes you want to explain the why of things. Maybe I was more open, and instead of reading novels, I got the idea in my head of discovering what happened to the soul after death from books.

M.-O.B.: Did you found answers in your previous religion, Islam?
O.S.: No, I turned more towards a philosophy inspired by Hinduism, because that's where I found the most self-denial, detachment from existence. I was interested in learning how one could achieve a state of bliss, I didn't have any problem believing in it. Whereas a chieftain, a priest, or a marabout wouldn't have persuaded me, because they are certainly not without ulterior motives. I found things in Hinduism that interested me and made me think.
I don't have a religion. I can read all the books, I'm interested in everything people may say to me, if they set an example. I don't have any gurus.

M.-O.B.: Do you believe in the reincarnation of the soul? Is that something you think about?
O.S.: Yes, I believe in reincarnation. The way Hindu philosophers explain it seems logical to me: with each reincarnation there is a purification of the soul, until it becomes what it was originally. And then there is no further reincarnation.

M.-O.B.: Have you established a link between the soul and what you learned about the body? Is your meditation room based on the idea that particular physical practices can lead to spirituality?
O.S.: For me taking off your shoes is already a start. Respecting the place applies to everybody. It wouldn't worry me if somebody went in there listening to music. What I don't want is for the place to be trivialised.

M.-O.B.: I was thinking of a particular practice, a particular bodily discipline that leads to spirituality…
O.S.: You mean yoga, for example? That's something I know nothing about. But it seems to me that it's very difficult to discipline both the body and the mind at the same time. In order to discipline the mind, you have to forget the body. When you adopt a pose, it seems to me that you can't forget the body, especially when you change position. Unless you remain for hours in the lotus position meditating, like the Hindus. But I don't think that is the case in Western societies.

M.-O.B.: For you, do discipline and meditation work through art? Would you allow any one to practise an artistic activity in that meditation room?
O.S.: No, that room really is designed for the spirit. If some one goes there to shut himself away, to create, I think he'd do better to go out on the terrace and look at the sea, because I believe creation is about stimulating the spirit. When people go into that room I hope they give themselves up to spiritual activities.

M.-O.B.: Don't you rank art among spiritual activities?
O.S.: Yes I do. What I mean is that there are two stages in the progress of art. You can't say that art is spiritual in the totality of its process. Art is spiritual in its conception: conceiving the sculpture and placing it in space. Also when it's finished. But between the two I think it's a physical effort. Maybe for a painter it's not the same thing. For a sculptor there's a moment when it's physical. But you also need spirituality to guide things towards the desired objective.

M.-O.B.: Do you prefer people to turn up unexpectedly?
O.S.: Yes, I like that, because often, when visits are planned, something goes wrong. When people turn up unexpectedly, provided they respect my frame of mind and realise I'm not going to stop for them, it's a break for me, even if I don't have the time to talk. But I still know there's somebody there during that time. That's part of life's improvisation.

M.-O.B.: I get the impression that it's an important aspect of your vision of the world: leaving room for improvisation…
O.S.: I don't like life to be too regimented. I detest the respect for timetables, a life where everything has its place. I like the surprises of life. I realised the other day that I've hardly ever had a boss, except when I worked for the Welfare Services. In the end that's what kept me away from politics. I don't want my fate to depend on anyone else. I want to be master of my own destiny from morning till night. It's a luxury that I had the good fortune to achieve. At the age I am now, I don't think I'll ever have a boss.

M.-O.B.: Do you believe that a life, or Life, is so powerful that you have to discover equally powerful motors to give it expression, existence?
O.S.: I think that, at the outset, you have to be receptive, disregarding nothing. Even something that seems banal at first sight can produce a certain satisfaction if you look at it closely. I don't believe that just because you have a patch of ground you are going to cultivate it, if you've never done so up till now. It's not because you have the time available that you cultivate your garden or go fishing. If it becomes a passion, then it's different. But you mustn't create additional activities under the pretext of filling your life. There's nothing worse or sadder. In this case it's a sort of life belt that doesn't save anybody. You have to find something really deep to animate a life.
The essential thing is to have an activity that satisfies you and not create one yourself. Just as when you're hungry you want to eat. You have to want to live.
That's why you have to be curious in life, try to explore everything, even if it has no apparent value. Be interested in what people do, that's how you discover what's interesting. And then go back to it, and again and again. If you notice you've already done the tour, look for something else. The deadliest thing is repetition.

M.-O.B.: Do you still want to live?
O.S.: Oh, to the full… and with very little.