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Jimmy Robert
French Artist Wears Army Shorts of Younger Brother
Born in Guadeloupe, raised in Paris and now based in Brussels, 31-year-old Jimmy Robert is an artist who I used to see out and about in London all the time. He was more or less the only black man at club nights such as Popstarz when it was in its heyday. Jimmy even started dating my ex-boyfriend just after we split up and were still sharing a dump of a flat together. It was weird to be around their burgeoning relationship. I would hear giggles coming from the other room when they were together, or muffled conversations. Or just loud-out laughter. I should have hated Jimmy but instead I found him really attractive and intriguing. I recently caught up with him in London. Despite the fact that he had been out all weekend, up to no good in various nightclubs, Jimmy appeared impeccable-as-always on this Monday morning in the cafe in Russell Square.
Portraits by Wolfgang Tillmans.
Portraits by Wolfgang Tillmans.
Jimmy: It's difficult to be photographed because I am a photographer, too. So for this shoot I made up some movements and had this sort of performance idea of going up on the roof and stripping down to some shorts.
Did it take you a while to feel comfortable?
We started in the studio and talked a little bit. I guess it was like foreplay, it really felt like a one-night stand. Like, okay, let's talk a bit, now let's get on with it and then you do that and then it's like, "Oh, okay, well thanks, goodbye!"
So you didn't get any breakfast afterwards, then?
No! (laughs)
In the pictures you are wearing shorts that belong to your brother, who's in the army, right? Did he know you were borrowing them?
I stole them.
Are they the regulation cotton army shorts?
Yeah. And the other ones are like this lycra sort that is shiny on the outside and matt on the inside. They're really nice.
Won't your brother want them back?
No! He has plenty. I have lots of other pairs from him. He gets them from the army.
Was it your idea to wear the shorts for the pictures?
Yeah, because I didn't want to go naked.
But just because it's performance, it doesn't mean I necessarily take my clothes off. I mean, you play a part - maybe it's something you can't articulate about yourself that you try to do with the body. So it's not necessarily disclosing something about yourself.
The last time I saw you was a few years ago, and you were just about to leave London and go and live in Amsterdam. Why were you moving there? I can't remember...
I had this residency there and got a place to live and work and other artists would come in to see me and give advice and talk. Then each year you show your work and curators and galleries come round. It was all quite serious and professional and you get exposure that you wouldn't normally get in London. Like, next week I am showing stuff in Paris, so things are moving on in an interesting way. A lot of the things I was doing when I was living in London were not feeling right, not just in aesthetics but in the way people read it.
The work I had seen of yours was mostly photography - like a little book that you had put together which was on sale at the Photographers Gallery. I recall one black-and-white image, in particular, of a crumpled bed in an empty room - a black-and-white photograph - which I quite liked.
My work is now more like photographic installations - like collage, film stills and performance. So there is more activity, a sense of people moving around and so on. I do things with movement, so I'S like using the body as you might any other material.
Your photographs, films, performances.. What are they all 'about'?
Well, I think primarily about a sense of alienation or a desire that is almost impossible. It is playing with these surfaces. There is always a limit to what you can do with your body, or what you can do with an image. In the end, it is almost "nothing”. In a way it's saying: nothing is something.
That sounds very Andy Warhol!
Yes, but my work is quite different. People have said there is a lot of romanticism going through my work…
Are you a romantic?
I don't know - I hate that kind of label, because if you do something different from that then people say, "Oh, I didn’t think you would do that” - like spending a weekend on drugs or something.
Like you just did…
Yes.
Well anyone can be a lot of different things, can't they?
Well I think it's a very post-modern idea that you can be whatever you want, but I don't know... I think you can play that, but then you come back and get the shock of a reality check.
So which aspect is more the real you?
I don't know, because, in the end, the thinking always comes back, so you end up going, "Oh shit, why did I do that?" Not because of guilt, but more like an awareness. Like when you are having sex and you start to think about the strangeness of what you are doing.
Like suddenly going outside of yourself and seeing the whole animal-like mess?
Yeah!
Did you meet anyone exciting this weekend?
Yeah, I met this guy at a club who was supplying me with drugs - I was not feeling so great after too much K though.
So he was a dealer, you mean?
I don't know. But he had a big stash!
What was he like?
He asked if I'd been to some new faggot place and we got talking about that and then he was dropping pills and doing K and then we went to his place and we were chatting and laughing - I couldn't stop laughing. He was asking when was the last time I had sex and sort of suggesting that maybe I was straight or something..
He wasn't sure if you were straight or not, you mean?
I don't know - maybe he was trying to play out some fantasy or something. But we ended up watching Female Trouble for a bit and laughing about Dawn Davenport.
I like her!
Yeah - those Cha-Cha heels!!
I always imagine you have a certain type you go for... The sort of fresh-faced English indie-boy type.
I don't know if I have a certain type.
I wonder why!
Because it becomes harder and harder to get the type you like? What type was the guy at the weekend, then?
He was quite short and stocky - he reminded me of someone I wanted to shag. He turned out to be someone really funny and...whatever. In that environment, there are shifts at a much faster pace than normal and you are totally aware of it but also totally embracing it, and thinking, "Oh, he's a bit like so and so," and then all of a sudden all your fantasies are activated and you can get attracted to people you might not normally get attracted to and you let go, and you're not so precious.
Hmm. That could just be the effect of the drugs! Do you always wear glasses now? They make you look very mature…
And you can also hide behind them, of course.
What about your sense of style - let's talk about that. You are one of those people who can wear an old jumper you found in the gutter and still look amazing. How bothered are you about clothes and style?
Well, I grew up in France, where there is this whole sense of being ‘chic’ - it seems to be part of the French culture. Growing up in the suburbs when the whole hip-hop thing was emerging, it was all really low, large trousers.
You must have stuck out.
Yeah, I was always trying to resist that in a way to see if there could be room for something else. Moving to London was great for that, because you could just do whatever you wanted.
It's generally much less about being chic here and much more about having a magpie approach to dressing...
And people don't really judge you for that, whereas now I live in Brussels and people will look at you strangely or freak out. It's a bit 'indie' there, which is cool, and there is a sense of underground, which I didn't find in Amsterdam, but it is very small and provincial at the end of the day.
So, if you break the mould in some way - dressing like you do, for instance - then you get unwanted attention.
Well that sort of translates into so many things, not just clothes, but how you live your life and judgements that are made about you.
You don't tend to see too many black guys on the indie scene.
True, yeah, especially in Brussels. In England there are black pop stars, so there is representation. In Brussels, if you go out to those clubs, you are seen as a bit exotic or even a bit weird.
Does that give you a kind of currency in way, though?
No, not really.
That whole indie thing can feel so white and middle class though - it's a very safe form of rebellion.
Yes.
What are your brothers like? Do they look like you? How many are there?
I have three brothers, but we don't all have the same dad. They are tall, and in the army. One is 23, one is 20 and one is 15.
Do you get on with them?
They are always interested in what I am doing and quite supportive. They probably think I lead some sort of exotic life, but I don't think they want to do what I do.
How come you didn't have to join the army?
I saw a doctor and said I had a problem with my knee, but he wasn't sure if I would have to do it or not. I was desperate to avoid it, as it would have meant going back to France for a year. Although, the idea of being in an all-male environment for a while would have been exciting. But after a few weeks it would have been much less so. So, after that I saw another doctor, a woman this time, and I played out this whole dark suicide thing and then the gay thing and being an artist, so she said I didn't have to do it.
It went from a bad knee to suicide so quickly! Is it okay to include this in the interview? Won't you get forced to join the army or something, if they read this magazine?
No, it has all changed now and it's not compulsory anymore.
What do your brothers think about you being gay?
Well, they would ask, but at the same time they would feel that they were being intrusive, because I am quite discreet at the end of the day. So it's a paradox of me wanting them to ask, because it's part of my life. And wondering, do they maybe think it's disgusting, or maybe not? Like, in the summer I was with my brother and his girlfriend in Paris and I saw a guy really checking my brother out - my brother is muscular and good looking and tall with a skinhead. I was really annoyed, though, at this guy staring so intensely at my brother - it was weird, I found it almost abusive.
For sure, but I wouldn't do that. I would check someone out discreetly, even if they liked the attention.
Are you bothered about getting older?
No, I am looking forward to being old and wise and going bald and grey. Actually, I like grey hair - it's really sexy. In Amsterdam there are all these bars that are stuck in the 70s and have the Tom of Finland kind of posters on the walls and the old leather queens go there...
Oh, I love all those old leather queens. They look really proud and fantastic.
Yeah, it's all fine in Amsterdam to be like that. But in some ways it's very liberal there, and in other ways it's so conservative, scarily so, I would say.
Did you use to often hang out in these Amsterdam leather bars?
Well, they give you this sense of not really knowing anyone and just kind of disappearing in the dark. At first nobody is looking, or cruising each other, but then in the dark anything can happen. The paradox is it gives you a space to think about things... I think a lot about my work in these sorts of places, because it's like being in a bubble, another space. I would meet a friend there and we would talk about our work and stuff.
In some ways, you use these bars as the opposite of what they're meant to be there for? So the next step is to have deep and meaningful work discussions in a darkroom while someone's being fisted.
Well, that has happened! (laughs)
Have you had sex with many other black guys?
Well, I have had a few, but I don't meet that many who are attracted to me.
So is the big-dick myth true in your experience? Do you have a big dick, if you don't mind me asking?
Have I measured it? Well, I think everyone has to go through that phase. There was this funny situation once. I met this surgeon, really attractive. He was high on coke and became really obsessive - showing me this porno film with someone sitting on a traffic cone. It looked painful! The surgeon guy was sexy though, and I was looking forward to it, but he just seemed obsessed with having something big shoved up his arse, and that was the first time I felt really objectified, like a giant dildo or something. It was like I wasn't there.
Did you oblige?
Well, out of curiosity, but after a while he got out this massive dildo - a free-standing one.
It'll all end in tears!
Well, I just left then, because there was no need for me and there was no interaction. What was I meant to do, just watch or something?
Do you find that people want to have sex with you just because you're black and they hope you'll have a big dick?
It's a myth that refuses to die and of course you don't just want to be a sexual object and you don't want to see people in that way either. It can just make you seem redundant as a person or a personality, so you might as well just get a dildo. And you can buy black dildos, of course. (laughs)
Are you a size queen yourself?
No, I'm really crap at telling how big someone is anyway.
Are you a Rita or Peter? Sorry, I know it's really immature, but I love that expression.
I think it's better when you can't quite say.
If you're not going to be able to take what you give then it's disappointing. It is nice when things are subverted, so they don't turn out quite the way you thought they would.
Do you like anonymous sex? Like, did you use to come here at Russell Square when it was a not-very-top-secret cruising area?
Not so much. But I loved getting lost in Hampstead Heath and, it sounds like a cliche, but being kind of at one with nature.
Just walking around... It could be scary - which is quite titillating - because there could be police there or you could meet a psycho killer or something.
Were there any serial killers you found particularly interesting?
No, not really.