Boris & Natacha produce bizarre and quirky artwork that often deals in the sombre issue of death, although they always manage to turn it into something exciting and humorous. Their cheeky Grave Rubbery (frottage onto gold paper) is their unique way of receiving messages in the form of anagrams from the dead famous. They manage to pull these pranks by keeping their identity hidden. These secret troublemakers teamed up back in 2003 and have quietly exhibited all over the world. This June, they are exhibiting new works-on-paper at Basel focused around the so-called technique of Grave Rubbery, after which the exhibition is named. The 45 one-off pieces consist of gold-scribed letters etched from the tombstones of famous dead people. Dazed Digital sat them down for a chat...
 
Dazed Digital: What sparked the fascination with death you both have? What information have you received from beyond the graves of famous people?
Boris + Natascha: Death is not really as scary as the media makes it out to be. We know that we have been dead many times before. All of the additional information we have received form the dead in the process of Grave Rubbery can be found in a black envelope that is currently held by our lawyer in Siberia. We have given orders for it to be opened in the year 2525. If man is still alive.
 
DD: If somebody used Grave Rubbery on your grave, what do you think they would spell out?
Boris + Natascha: We are both agreed that we would preferably just disappear via a Tibetan Sky Burial, so there will be no tombstone to talk to. But please do feel free to talk to the vultures.
 
DD: 'Words Lie' is what you scribed from Oscar Wilde’s grave, is their a hidden message there? What are your views on Oscar Wilde’s roller-coaster life story?
Boris + Natascha: Oscar says you should to refer to his story 'The Nightingale And The Rose'. Regarding his life: we are not here to judge the dead. All the famous dead people that we have worked with in this exhibition have had a roller-coaster life. Jesus, Hitler and The Queen Mother are all still on our Grave Rubbery list. We never know beforehand what we will receive. It all happens there at the grave, feeling the magic resonance of the bones.
 
DD: Why have you chosen to fashion the artwork on to gold paper?
Boris + Natascha: It was actually the advice of Vincent van Gogh. He said if he had used real gold in his paintings, things could have turned out differently for him: he may have sold a work in his lifetime and may then have felt better about himself and not gone out into the field and shot himself in the stomach. But these things are always easier in hindsight and we like to learn from the Dead.
 
DD: A few of your graveyard shift missions have been interrupted, who caught you?
Boris + Natascha: The Wicked Witch of the East, a grumpy stout french lady and an Austrian guy with a bad haircut who was screaming 'Don't touch the stones!!!' Then we would get thrown out of the graveyard, sometimes elegantly, sometimes somewhat more brutally.
 
DD: What are you most excited about seeing and encountering during Art Basel 40?
Boris + Natascha: The graveyards, of course.
 

ART FROM BERLIN:
Yasha Young Gallery – Strychnin
SCOPE Basel, June 15 - 19
Booth H49