Atelier Van Lieshout’s Domestikator at the Centre Pompidou. Photo Jean-Pierre Vaillancourt for Carpenters Workshop Gallery.

The sculpture was on view for three years in Bochum, Germany, where it caused no controversy at all. How did you feel when the Louvre banned its display in the Tuileries?

I was surprised, first of all. Astonished, actually, as it was the last thing I expected, someone saying this is a sexually explicit work. There’s no nudity, it’s not political, it’s not disrespectful to any group or religion. And the way the work was portrayed in the media was irritating. So I’m really happy it’s been given a second chance, an even better chance I’d say, to show the work and to have a conversation about what the work is really about.

I can see members of your team moving inside the sculpture, what’s inside it?

A number of sculptures and video works from my “Crypto-Futurism” series, which the Domestikator is part of. Also, a program of talks and performances will take place during the week. It’s not a fixed program, but friends, curators, artists, and thinkers will be dropping by and starting an evolving series of events until October 22. The public is absolutely invited to drop in and participate.

The censorship of your piece comes after two high-profile cases involving vandalizism of public sculpture in Paris. One was Paul McCarthy‘s Tree (also known as the “butt plug/christmas tree”), which was installed at the Place Vendôme in 2014 also part of FIAC’s Hors Les Murs. The other one is Anish Kapoor‘s Dirty Corner, which was attacked repeatedly at Versailles in 2015. Do you think the Domestikator could get vandalized?

I don’t think so… Or at least I hope not… That would be a very negative thing. I think sometimes certain groups take an artwork to project their ideas on it. But I don’t really understand what all this vandalizing is about.

Do you think there’s a wave of conservatism facing the art world?

I think we are seeing more and more of it, like the recent case at the Guggenheim with the video of the dogs. But I think it has more to do with populism rather than with conservatism, in general. And also with museums becoming big enterprises, huge operations with loads of money, and dependant on money. They have to have lots of public, so they go for populist and popular exhibitions, with key commercial interests. Controversial discussions and bad publicity are not tolerated anymore. Museums can’t take any risks. Which is a pity, because that triggers a process of self-censorship. Maybe there should be a new type of museum, more like a lab, where complex and difficult ideas are allowed and encouraged again.

I think the most interesting thing about this case for me is that you have much more controversial/difficult bodies of work than this one—for example your series “Slave City“—so I find it rather arbitrary that this was the work that was singled out. Have you had any previous experiences with censorship?

Yes, a couple of times before. Once, like 20 years ago, also in France, when I had a show organized by the Museum de Toulouse in a small village, which was closed by the then-mayor. And then in the Netherlands, five or seven years ago, where I made a really innocent work, a bus stop called Alpha & Omega, with one being and egg and the other a skull, which was criticized by religious group.

So yes, I think art sometimes provides the perfect change to some groups to tell the media that they are alive, and art is defenceless to this, as artists are less organized and protected.