Artist Bio
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Marc Kiska was born in France in 1983 and raised by schoolteachers in a small town close to Saint-Etienne. As an adolescent he was deeply attracted to underground culture and alternative lifestyles, romanticizing decadence and rebellion, which has deeply influenced his work. The shame, denial and confusion of being different in so many ways, including the discovery of his homosexuality, all strongly marked his world-view and values. As a quiet, introverted boy, Kiska started writing at the age of 14. In love with fantasy and the wondrous, with dreams and the inner, troubled worlds of youngsters; doubting, opposing and distrusting the hollow, grave reality of adulthood. Disillusioned by a lack of substantial mirroring and genuine ideals, he absorbed himself with the outlands of normality, a Kaspar Hauser, falling in love with Arthur Rimbaud, who promises something more, somewhere else.
Kiska wasn’t ultimately satisfied by his writing, and at the age of 20, he started taking a fast growing interest in photography; discovering a whole new dimension in which he could express himself. He started off taking photos to illustrate his short stories, and he immediately connected to the lens and found great passion in this new dimension to explore and communicate his vision and inner enterprise. One of his first shoots (2004) was literally inside the walls of the City Hall of Oslo, where he worked as a cook. He discovered there small, secret passages inside some of the walls. This portrays his artistic identity, revealing itself in that space, mysterious, hidden, in between parentheses and brackets, barely sheltered from the numb and rigid, institutional charade playing out on the other side of those duplexed walls.
After 10 years of art photography he launched his book Outlandish /Room/ (2014) which got great attention in several countries. “Les vestiges d’Alice” is Kiska’s debut novel, which he first started to work on in 2009 after having focused on short stories since 2001.
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Images and text are copyright of the artist.
To explore more of Kiska’s works visit: www.marckiska.com.
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Love Marc Kiska’s work! I recently purchased his book Outlandish Room and it is extraordinarily interesting and beautiful. His work is sublime and inspiring to me – I so love the ‘outlands of normality’….
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