Antonia Wetzel

What is the first object, place or action that you perceived and remember as art?
I was crawling over my grandmother's sculptures in her backyard when I was a kid. Climbing on a sculpture was naturally something a person could do. When I got older and learned how to draw, I made drawings of naked people when I visited grandmother again and my mother told me to draw something else – to not draw this here, in this place – so, my work received a response from people, it evoked something in them.

What do you associate with the term intervention?
Stopping a crime or harassment.

Is art political?
Art will be used as a tool for projection and therefore mirror ongoing political struggles or conversations. I do not think there is such a thing as apolitical art.

What is important to you in the exchange between the arts, academia and public spheres?
A close relationship between art and academia is important.

Can an artistic intervention fail?
Art is constant failure.

Is there an artist or activist who should be better known – and why?
Jonathan Lyndon Chase: they make mesmerizing artwork of queer black sexuality and it is everything I wish I could have seen as the kid who was not allowed to draw naked people in my gandmother's yard.