Floria Sigismondi was born into a world of contradictions. The offspring of a wannabe nun and an atheist father, this Italian visual artist was fascinated by extreme opposites and taught to always question life. “I was forever deconstructing things to see how they work,” she recalls of her childhood interest in dismembering toys – a habit she’s continued to embrace in her award-winning career as a photographer, and music video director for the likes of Marilyn Manson, David Bowie and The Cure. Only these days, while doll parts do feature in her nightmarishly exquisite creations, it’s the dark depths of the human psyche that she’s more prone to dismantling. Sigismondi’s art is rich, surreal and challenging; a luxurious, gothic wallow in which her Catholic school scars of guilt, suffering and redemption are laid bare and the most beguiling beauty comes from mortality and decay. She has released two photography books, Redemption (1998) and Immune (2005), and is working on her first feature-length movie projects, following last year’s film-short Postmortem Bliss.

	The mouth apparatus from Marilyn's video was agonising

What inspires you?

Things that anger me. Life. Things I love. Things that can be controversial, maybe in a political sense. Things that break the mould of what people think. Because the idea starts from such a deep place inside, I think maybe these places live in everyone – some people tap in to them, some people don’t.

How about dreams?

When the dreams are very vivid I do get some inspiration from them. I also get inspiration from being overly fatigued – rules don’t apply to that kind of state, it’s sort of bending reality. I think I dream more in symbolism, in a very visual way. I can see something extremely detailed. I’ve got notebooks full of ideas from them. For example, the doll in the Marilyn Manson ‘Tourniquet’ video, I’d actually drawn her up before I found the girl, and the girl looked exactly like the drawing. So it’s just sort of putting all that stuff out there. Basically, it’s having trust, and maybe that’s the reason the work comes across more honestly, because I have trust in that creative process and let it take me somewhere. Let it have its voice.

What’s the strangest thing you’ve dreamt about?

A prostitute who lived under a bar. She was sort of half-monkey and half-human, so she had hair over her body. Men would come up and literally stand and order a drink while having sex with her. But her vagina was on her back so they would just kind of lean forwards. Speaking to somebody who was an expert on dreams, they said that displaced genitalia represented creativity – maybe I felt my creativity was being abused or something… Oh, and the prostitute had a pegleg.

Modern society seems intent on numbing itself – whether through drugs or just by homogenising life. Your work is the opposite of that; it actually provokes thought and feeling. But what do you personally hope people get from your work?

I’d love for it to open different ways of thinking. Looking at things from different angles. Not being force-fed. Not being bought by modern society, because I think society is far too commercial and far too homogenised, and individualism is completely taboo. It’s all about looking the same and not feeling.

What’s the weirdest thing you’ve made anyone do in your videos?

The most painful thing was the mouthpiece in the Marilyn Manson video [‘The Beautiful People’], and then having Tricky crawl all over the floor [for his ‘Makes Me Wanna Die’ widget], and under the bed and lick walls. He thought I was crazy. And it was so funny because he wouldn’t do it unless I did it. So I had to go and do it and then he would. And then I remember him seeing the cut and going: “Isn’t there more of me doing that?” And I’m like: “You wouldn’t do it!” People always feel a bit weird, because they have to perform in front of a crew. But because those ideas come from a much more intimate place for me, when I’m creating them with people I don’t see everybody around me – it’s a very insular moment that’s happening.

You have a reputation for torturing people you work with. Martina Topley-Bird was reptile-phobic, and yet you put her in a bath writhing with snakes in the Tricky video, and then she also had trouble in the underwater scenes…

Martina almost drowned! We had to fight with the record company and they wouldn’t let her go back in. We had a diver with her, but she had this massive dress on that weighed a ton once wet. We were in an Olympic pool with an observatory window, so the diver would take her down with an oxygen mask and then release her. But it was
a long way to go up and that dress was weighing her down… And then in the scene with the bearded dragons sitting on her head a couple of them started to fall down. They almost scratched her eye out – those things have wicked long nails.

Didn’t you give David Bowie eye problems too?

Oh my God, Bowie! I can’t believe this happened. I made these lenses that cover the whites of the eyes as well as the coloured part. They’re quite complicated to get in; you’ve really got to stretch your eyelids. So since it was David Bowie, we thought, let’s get a doctor to put them in. Well, the doctor used these eyedrops he thought would make Bowie feel more comfortable. But what they were doing was numbing his eye, so he had no idea that the peat moss we were using was getting underneath his lenses and completely scratching his eyes. And so the drops started to wear off after four hours and he’s like: “I’ve got to get these lenses out!” in a panic. When he came to me, the whites of his eyes were completely red, and so they had to rush him to a hospital.

Returning to the bearded dragons, animals are a recurring feature of your work. What’s their appeal?

I love animals. I think animals live deep, deep inside of us, and we’ve segregated them out of our society to become these things to look at in the zoo… So for me, it’s an awakening of the more primal part of myself and humanity. I think there’s something very pure and honest about animals, the same as with children. Animals don’t have the complicated thoughts we do. Their behaviour is a survival instinct. It’s very pure.

While I think your work is extremely beautiful, it could be seen as reflective of a dark and disturbed mind. Is that true? Are you a morbid person?

No! I just look at things maybe people think are ugly and disturbing. ‘Ugly’ doesn’t belong in my vocabulary, but people like to use that word. I like to challenge that; I think if you look at anything long enough, there’s no reason for it not to be beautiful… If you say, “OK, I’ll show you a raw human heart,” for example, I see it with all the colours and the richness… For me, if I thought my work was morbid, I don’t think I could do it.

In your short film Postmortem Bliss, the character says, “I crave the monster and the monster craves me.” If you view this monster as being not a drug, but the dark side of one’s own psyche, do you think that statement applies to you too?

I do crave that. I crave it because it enables me to be lighter. Because I purge it, I let it out. I’m not afraid, or maybe I’m a bit more inviting to see that part of myself rather than pretend everything’s the opposite. The world is made up of both sides. You can’t have light without dark; same applies the other way round. I move through these things in my work, and it enables me to be a bit lighter, so I don’t go slitting my wrists or something. Ha!

What would your advice be to anybody wanting to follow in your footsteps?

Don’t look at other people’s work or try to emulate their style. Style is easy, but one thing no-one can take away is your inner voice. Keep experimenting with ideas, keep creating… The voice gets purer and makes more sense to you the more you do it and the more you find out what excites you.