She swears its fiction.
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Amalia Ulman and I are being kicked out of Giorgio Armani.
I think you might be more comfortable in the furniture department.
Iwascomfortable, Ulman says, after a beat.
Afterward, she was bothaccusedof being ahoaxsterand lauded asthe first great Instagram artist.
Now everything she does is suspected to be some kind of elaborate hoax.
Which is probably true.
(When I ask Ulman about this quote, she laughs.
Dean is a very romantic person.)
When I ask about her reputation for purposefully blurring her art and her life, Ulman is visibly frustrated.
Thats on the press, she says.
Its really weird to be accused of lying when youre working on a work of fiction.
She doesnt think shes doing anything different than other artists who use their real life as a jumping-off point.
Though she does acknowledge that, at least in a practical sense, boundaries dont really exist for her.
Im constantly working, because thats my life, she says.
I wake up thinking about it.
I go to bed thinking about it.
Everything that I do is tied to my practice.
I dont have a traditional family to rely on.
I dont have anything like that.
Everything that I do is connected to my work, but thats how a lot of artists live.
She says she now plans on attending classes next year to study to become a water sommelier.
Nothing is work and nothing is life.
Its all just all the same.
I used the most fetishistic art there is, film, to objectify my biggest trouble, she concludes.
Why wouldnt I choose the most vulgar art form to show a vulgarity of this magnitude?
My mother and I actually had fun making the film, making something beautiful out of something really awful.
Nonetheless, she maintains the biographical link is unimportant.
Its not even me in the film.
Im very different from Leonor, my mother is super different from Maria.
But theyre like vessels onto which people can project themselves, especially because theyre not perfect.
Ive always liked anti-heroes.
I really didnt want to star in it.
I also didnt want my mom to star in it, she says.
She was always imagining things.
It occurs to me then that at least part of Ulmans public persona is about being self-protective.
To be Argentinian is to identify reality through fiction.
I guess I am very Argentinian after all.
After seeing the film, July apologized; shes now avocal supporter.
Its great that she admitted it at least, says Ulman.
Whats with the shirt?
asks Maria, bemused.
I dont know, replies Leo, shrugging.
El Planetahas already received the sort ofpositivecriticalattention that threatens to destabilize Ulmans status as a misunderstood artist.
Im not trying to pity myself, I could never, she writes in the pieces cheeky PowerPoint format.
Im only trying to describe a mood.
Transoceanic dualities of praise and disdain.
The mood of being a lonely teenager and showing up to the party uninvited.
Ulman is of the opinion that shell always be straddling some invisible but permanent line.
When I ask her if this new film is also about grifters, she smiles.
Nobodys really scamming each other, Ulman says.
But theyre hiding things.
