them to make an anatomically correct dinosaur.” SD: I read André Robillard’s colourful 22 Firearms as ironic comment about art in the service of propaganda. There’s a toy Noddy atop the biggest gun. JB: There is no Freudian interpretation allowed in The Museum of Everything. There is no symbolism here. People are not making ironic comments. People are making direct comments about their lives. André Robillard is a delicate man who lives in a hospital. He started making rockets and spaceships. He came to our last show and I interviewed him. He’s an adult with a communication issue, but he’s bloody funny. I can show you a film of him speaking Martian. SD: You have Augustin Lesage’s paintings. He was a healer guided by voices and there are gods and pharaohs and totems. He’s a former coal miner. Were you interested in what the artists had done before they became artists? JB: Lesage was the best known of the French spiritualists. He claims to be channelling the spirits, but he’s also trying to convert you to Spiritism. It’s about conversion to a belief, as Malcolm X would say, by any means necessary. I’m very interested in him being a miner that converted, and somebody who was guided. That work is in the room of agency, meaning loss of agency. Can you really admit you’re an artist? How does someone who works down in the mine say that? SD: Is calling yourself an artist more di!icult when you’re working class? JB: That’s very true. Calling yourself an artist is di!icult, period. Most of the artists in The Museum of Everything don’t dare to call themselves artists, or if they do, it comes after a long period of time. We have an installation, by road engineer Nek Chand, an Indian artist I got to know who died last year, and he created this huge garden in Chandigarh. I said to him, “Are you an artist?” And he said, “Oh, no, no, I’m just working.” I said, “Well, why did you start doing this?” And he said, “God is in every stone.” For him, the spiritual dimension is very connected, and the idea that you can make a kinetic work of art, it’s a theatrical work that 10,000 people visit a day, I guess I’ve learned a lot from Nek Chand. How do I make a place where lovers can come and hang out, or where people can play. SD: The two painted doors by the US street preacher Reverend Anderson Johnson, who converted his home into a faith mission, struck me. I’m wondering how you would define your own spirituality? JB: When I get exposed to that much of it, I can’t help but start to connect to it. I wouldn’t say I believe in any of the things that are on display, but I believe in the belief in them. Rather than embracing the sublime, my own transcendence is through the engagement with this material, and engagement with people who have had revelation. So my own revelation is through them. The Museum of Everything Mona 10 June – April 2