Sophia Giovannitti: It’s horrible to admit what you want because then you might not get it, and everyone will know.
Yoshitomo Nara: They disappeared when I became more independent of my past and took up the challenge of living in the present.
Giovannitti: There’s definitely a melancholic edge.
Nara: But nowadays I’m listening to a lot of Eminem.
Giovannitti: Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
•••
Nara: Dusseldorf in 1988.
Giovannitti: You said it, not me.
Nara: That may be right. I’m repressing my desire to explode—almost to a sadistic degree.
Giovannitti: I’m not exactly sure how to describe it, because it’s in its prototypical stage—but I’ve just started performing it, and I can say that the experience feels like I am speaking to hostages, partly because the space is tiny and I’m performing it to very few people at a time.
Nara: So the white space of the comic strip becomes a kind of graffiti wall.
•••
Giovannitti: Scorpions are so scary to me, and frogs are so cute.
Nara: They’re in-between figures, neither male nor female. They’re pure evil.
Giovannitti: Or citizenship. Or tax breaks.
Nara: Children’s picture books and graffiti.
Giovannitti: What do you believe these forms to be worth?