It is about becoming the character from the inside.

Introduction

Christian Fuchs grew up surrounded by his ancestors. Ensconced in gilt-swept frames or preserved in sepia, they beheld him from a world long gone yet vividly alive in his youthful imagination. Their thoughts and deeds detailed in letters and documents in the family archive. Their presence palpable in the telling and retelling of his grandmother’s stories. For him, past and present were all part of his lived experience, his forebears as integral as his immediate family.

Being an artist, it was perhaps inevitable that this richly extended sense of historical interconnection – of where he came from, his origins – would become the seedbed of his creative practice. In each of his ‘self-portraits’, he takes on the persona of one of his predecessors. The critic Loïc Millot recently likened Christian Fuchs to Virginia Woolfe’s ageless, gender-shifting poet, Orlando – Woolfe’s novel itself inspired by the aristocratic family history of her friend and lover, Vita Sackville-West. It is an astute comment, because, for Christian Fuchs, these images go far beyond play-acting. He seeks to meld with his ancestor in such a way that each becomes a ‘self-portrait’ both of himself and of the person whose likeness he has taken on. Not simply to reinterpret their physical aspect but to become them in a performative process that is as much psychological and metaphysical as it is visually mimetic. For, while the past is resurrected pictorially in the present, the present also comes to haunt the interior of the past.

While he began by drawing on the characters familiar to him from childhood, in time he looked wider and deeper. His research took him to other regions, other countries, and on to Europe, tracing ever deeper familial connections stretching back over ten or more generations. (Discovering, among other things, that Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) was his sixth great uncle.) But while the personal narratives traced in this work are as personal and they are remarkable, they also stand as a reminder of a more universal truth: that we all exist within the flow of intersecting generations. We are each of us the trunk of a family tree that, while it is specific to us, has roots that spread and tangle. And the further back we go, the greater that entanglement must inevitably be. For each of us, our family tree stands in a near-infinite forest, an ecology in which the flow of past to future binds us together in a mutual present.

Alasdair Foster

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Interview

How did your remarkable portrait project begin?

I have been shaping this project for as long as I can remember – unconsciously, without knowing what it would become. As a child, my paternal grandmother told me about the characters portrayed in the paintings that covered the walls, who owned the objects. Books, vases, crystal, porcelain, absolutely everything in our house had a story. They began to create images in my mind that, many years later, would be rearranged to become my first creative works.

© Christian Fuchs – from the series ‘Ahnensonne’ 2009

Before you began making these ‘self-portraits’, what kind of art did you create?

In the house there were also paintings of landscapes and the regions where my ancestors had lived. There was one specific painting that became the key to beginning my family history project. It depicted the Rahue estate, a property belonging to my paternal grandmother’s grandparents; a magical place where she had spent the happiest moments of her childhood and adolescence. It was this painting that formed the basis of the first image in an art project called ‘Ahnensonne’. This project featured digital collages that combined my own photographs with old pictures from the family archive, creating a dreamlike atmosphere through which I told stories of my family.

Following this project – and a series of photographic landscapes in Chile and Germany, places where my extended family were living – I felt the urgent need to get closer to my ancestors. So, I decided to ‘become’ them…

[Left] © Christian Fuchs ‘Luise Eleonore Charlotte Chée’ self-portrait 2013 (fourth great-grandmother)
[Right] Painting of Luise Eleonore Charlotte Chée (1804–1832) c1829 (artist unknown)

What was the first ancestral portrait you re-created?

‘Eleonora’ based on a painting of Luise Friederike Charlotte Chée, my grandmother’s great-great-grandmother. She was a lady from the French colony in Berlin who became the first wife of Eduard Buschmann, my fourth great-grandfather [that is, great-great-great-great-grandfather].

What kind of research do you undertake before making a portrait?

I was lucky to have been born into a family with a lot of knowledge of its history on both sides and to have inherited documents, letters, objects, and family albums that belonged to them. But, beyond that, I have dedicated a lot of time traveling to the places they have lived, reviewing church archives and visiting relatives who provided me with new insights and information. This detail is important. It wouldn’t be possible to bring these individuals back to life without knowing what they liked and loved… what diseases they had… so that I can understand the many dimensions of the person I am going to become.

Preparing for the self-portrait of ‘La Quintrala’ (video 1:42) © Christian Fuchs

How do you go about sourcing the costumes and accessories? Creating the hair and make-up?

I research the historical period, materials, and sewing patterns so that the result is as close as possible to the original. All costumes are then made by dressmakers and tailors with experience in re-creating historical costumes. The replica jewellery is constructed by specialists who work in silver, which is later plated in gold and set with semiprecious stones. However, in some specific cases, I have been able to use my ancestors’ original jewellery.

When it comes to hair, I work with stylists. When I have enough to play with, they use my own hair, otherwise they use wigs. The makeup is usually done by established professionals with experience in making prosthetics.

The make-up and hairstyling team play a very important role in this part. In the portrait of Grand Marshal Don Juan Bautista Elespuru y Montes de Oca [below] – which was one of the first portraits I made – the challenge was that the Marshal’s features were more delicate than my own. The make-up artist used contouring techniques to make my nose look thinner. And for the hair, the stylist prepared a wig because my hair has less structure than the marshal’s and could not be made to stand so high.

[Left] © Christian Fuchs ‘Grand Marshal Don Juan Bautista Elespuru y Montes de Oca’ self-portrait 2014 (fourth great-grandfather)
[Right] Painting by José Gil de Castro of Grand Marshal Don Juan Bautista Elespuru y Montes de Oca (1787–1839) 1830

Why did you choose him?

He is my maternal fourth great-grandfather, a hero of the Battle of Yungay where he died in 1839. I chose the marshal because, growing up, my maternal grandmother told many stories about him. And there is a lot of available information, including a book about the Elespuru family along with letters and other documents. So, in his case, I did not really have to undertake a lot of additional research.

What I did spend time on, as I do with every portrait, was channelling. During the period I am working on a given character, I spend several hours each day embodying them. In this way, the ‘memories’ that I carry inside me as a descendant can be consciously awakened and I can really become them. That channelling is a very important part of my process. It goes far beyond the costume, the make-up, the hair… It is about becoming the character from the inside.

You later recreated a portrait of the marshal’s wife, Doña Natividad Martínez de Pinillos Cacho y Lavalle.

She is a delicious character. A mother of eight children, she was involved with the independence cause supporting her husband and, after losing him in the battle of Yungay, spent her life living between Lima and Europe. She hired famous European painters to portray her beautiful daughters and, together with them, attended the parties of Napoleon III in France.

[Left] © Christian Fuchs ‘Doña Natividad Martínez de Pinillos Cacho y Lavalle’ self-portrait 2014 (fourth great-grandmother)
[Right] Painting by José Gil de Castro of Doña Natividad Martínez de Pinillos Cacho y Lavalle (1803–1882) 1830

For her styling we also used contouring make-up, a natural hair wig, and I had to shave my chest and arms. Of course, a corset was necessary even though back then I was ten kilos lighter. For the dress I bought green silk, white organza, and little pearls. Even though she was painted in 1830 we can still see influences in the style from the earlier Empire period yet also evolving to become something else. There are chronicles from the time describing her as an elegant and witty lady ahead for her time.

Both of the original portraits were painted by José Gil de Castro, who was at the time the most celebrated portraitist in South America, painting many famous personalities in Perú, Chile, and Argentina.

How do you achieve that quality in the texture of the skin that appears so like a painting?

It’s the combination of the many layers of make-up, the bright studio lights, and the fine-art ultra-smooth cotton paper on which the portrait is printed. In the first instance, it was not actually planned but, once I saw the result, I continued to use it.

How long does it take to develop and create a portrait?

Generally, the period that passes between the selection of the character and the day of the shooting is approximately four months, during this time the costumes are made. But it can take much longer. When I created the portrait of Carl Schilling Rohde [below] – a clever and very successful businessman – it took me over a year and a half to grow the beard to the size we see in the carte de visite. But I found this process very insightful because, at some point, I myself started feeling old, tired, and accomplished, all at the same time!

[Left] © Christian Fuchs ‘Carl Schilling, The Patriarch’ self-portrait 2014 (third great-grandfather)
[Right] Carte de visite by Augusto Christ Carl of Philipp Schilling Rohde (1831–1923) c1896

What do you seek to explore in these ancestral re-creations?

I never really have any specific ideas before becoming each character. Rather, I make myself a vessel to receive information. But what does happen after each ‘incarnation’ is that I become aware of parts of myself that I hadn’t previously known. And, as I discover where they come from, I find I am no longer the same person I was before the performance. It always enriches me.

What are the more universal themes you seek to bring forward in your re-creation of these portraits?

My work addresses the way human beings are connected across time. How we inhabit a universal memory rather than being an isolated individual. How our ancestors are part of the great cyclic system of life in which we all push forward. Because I approach my work through my family history, it may superficially seem very personal, intimate. But genealogy is just an instrument though which to have access to the lives of one’s ancestors, to better understand their experiences and emotions. To see how they continue to impact us to this day because their memories sleep within us. We unconsciously manifest them in every moment of our life. It is precisely in the process of ‘becoming’ my ancestors, of repeating their behaviours for a period of time, that I seek to connect the viewer with our shared senses, awakening the memories that sleep within all of us that we may integrate them.

[Left] © Christian Fuchs ‘Dorothea Viehmann, The Fairytale Woman of the Brothers Grimm’ self-portrait 2017 (sixth great-aunt)
[Right] Etching by Ludwig Emil Grimm of Dorothea Viehmann (1755–1816) 1814

Recently, you have begun to look at more distant ancestral connections. Who are some of those famous people?

Some of them were known to the family, but there were others I uncovered over the years through my own research. For example, I found out that Dorothea Viehmann was the sister of my sixth great-grandmother Anna Sabine Pierson. Growing up, I did not know about Dorothea but, while visiting my Aunt Annemarie Schilling (my grandmother’s favourite cousin), she showed me an extensive family tree and explained my relationship to her.

Dorothea’s French ancestors escaped from Metz and settled in Kassel during the Huguenot persecution in France. Her father was an inn keeper and during her adolescence she served the travellers while listening to their stories, which she later mixed with those told to her by her French relatives. When she was much older, by then widowed and living a different town, she met the Brothers Grimm with whom she shared this wonderful oral tradition in more than forty stories. Stories that they would later include in their second volume of ‘Kinder und Hausmärchen’ (‘Children’s and Household Tales’).

The etching I used as a reference was made by the Brothers’ artist sibling, Ludwig Emil Grimm, in 1814.

© Christian Fuchs ‘Doña Catalina de los Ríos y Lisperguer – La Quintrala’ (1604–1665) self-portrait 2023 (tenth great-aunt)

Do you always have a visual reference for these portraits?

In the case of La Quintrala (Catalina de los Ríos y Lisperguer), I had no painting of her to work from. So, I created her image based upon the existing chronicles and documents about her. In my image she is dressed in black. This for two reasons: the first, because she is a dark character and, the second, because in that period noble women of her position would dress in black, a fabric that only the very rich could afford.

Catalina is my tenth great aunt by both of her lines – de los Ríos and Lisperguer – her four grandparents are my direct ancestors. She has gone down in history as a sinister figure: a poisoner and serial killer known as the cruellest woman of her era in Chile. (In the image, the chicken she holds in her hands refers to the one with which she is said to have poisoned her father.) Whatever her crimes, given the high social position she occupied, her influence, and her great wealth, she went unpunished. Nonetheless, at the end of her life she repented and left her entire fortune to the church for the salvation of her soul.

I can imagine that you would feel a degree of empathy for the celebrated characters you re-create, but what about the more infamous ones.

We all have a dark, underexplored side. The line between good and evil is very thin and it is interesting to investigate what led these darker individuals to choose their path. Often, I think, it is the lack of love. Personally, making the work, I did not find it difficult to connect with my dark aspect. We are all connected to the collective unconscious. The dark is available to us all to some extent, what we do with that knowledge depends on our individual personality and scruples.

[Left] © Christian Fuchs ‘Doña Emilia Elespuru y Martinez de Pinillos (1833-1860)’ self-portrait 2017 (third great-aunt)
[Right] © Christian Fuchs ‘Johann David Buschmann (1775-1852), Inventor of the Terpoion’ self-portrait 2018 (fifth great-grandfather)

I am fascinated by how this experience must be for you: intellectually and somatically to inhabit the past in such depth…

To be honest, I never felt like I fully inhabited the present. As a child I always had a deep nostalgia for something that remained unclear to me. Feelings that were bigger than me that I couldn’t explain. I don’t know if I can clearly separate what I think from what I feel. I believe that everything comes from the same place, a higher consciousness where the heart and mind merge into one. I think this whole process has taught me how important it is to feel, to live more in the heart and in the sensations than in the brain.

Making this work is a quite particular process. It involves ‘thinking’ that I am no longer myself in order to ‘become’ a different person. To do this involves disorganising my own personality to construct another. But if we consider that our own memory is accumulated from those who preceded us – albeit shaped by our personal lived experiences – we must conclude that it is the same memory, with the same parts, just regrouped in a new way. For me, it is a process of deep love in which we reconnect with all our parts, all our pasts, and embrace them.

[Left] © Christian Fuchs ‘Maria del Carmen Cortés Cartavio y Santelices (1712–1791)’ self-portrait 2024 (seventh great-grandmother)
[Right] © Christian Fuchs ‘Don Simon de Lavalle Bodega y de la Cuadra (1706–1791)’ self-portrait 2024 (seventh great-grandfather)

In making these portraits of your ancestors, what have you learned about yourself personally that you did not previously understand?

I have been fortunate to have access to the diaries and letters of many of my predecessors and, by reading what they wrote and feeling their experiences and lives so closely, I have come to understand that we do the best we can during our lives; that we are not perfect and nor were they.

This whole process of channelling and feeling what others felt has made me realise that guilt is of no use to us. It just fills us with fear and paralyses us and, in most cases, keeps us from living and experiencing our lives to the fullest. We have to relate to each other through what we feel and put aside all those negative preconceptions rooted in our ways of thinking through generations.

© Christian Fuchs ‘Sophie Buschmann née Volkmar (1806-1888)’ self-portrait 2018
(fourth great-aunt)

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This interview is a Talking Pictures original.

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