INTERVIEW BY ANDY CAPPER
Vice: Hello, Mimi Leung. Describe how you got to be talking to me here now via being born and then living as a human on this earth.
Mimi Leung: I was born in Hong Kong. My parents moved to the UK when I was two because they were nervous about unrest in China.
Oh, so you’re saying that your parents were fucking wimps?
No! Mum’s pretty business-minded, but Dad probably would have made a brilliant artist in a mad, makeshift way. He used to drive a minibus in Hong Kong but he was a take-away chef when he moved here.
What was your extended family like back in China?
My dad’s family was very poor. They lived on a farm and ate the bark off trees and once killed a neighbor’s cat for dinner. And when I say “farm,” I mean empty shitty land with maybe a useless rice field.
When did you first start making art?
I was always into drawing and painting since I was a kid. I was really into cartoons, manga, and anime. I used to like Biker Mice From Mars, Mighty Mouse, Earthworm Jim, Professor Q, and Dragon Ball Z. Then I got into expressionists like Egon Schiele, Frank Auerbach, Käthe Kollwitz, and I loved Van Gogh for a while.
What did you use to make the paintings that are next to these words that we are speaking, which will soon be transferred into typed letters on a page?
Watercolor and gouache on paper.
What’s your favorite kind of paint?
Usually whatever is cheap.
You went to Central Saint Martins, right? How was that?
I hated the first two years, but in the last year I had a cool tutor named Ann Course. She was less stuffy and smarmy than a lot of the people there. But yeah, the seriousness and earnestness of that place and the Royal College of Art, where I went afterward, really affected me. I didn’t like talking in-depth about design and stuff. It seemed trivial in the greater scheme of things and I guess I don’t work in an intellectual way. Everybody was trying to be clever when I just wanted to do crazy drawings. I didn’t fit in at all.
You weren’t in the Cheap Mondays mafia.
See, I don’t even know what that means.
Cheap Mondays are jeans that “cool people” wear.
My jeans are full of holes. I have to wear tights with them.
Tights make me horny. But I digress. Your work is kind of psychedelic. Did you ever get into acid?
Not acid, but mushrooms and stuff. I’ve seen friends on acid and it freaked me out a bit.
Your stuff also has lots of bodily functions in it, like beautiful birds puking on each other, or cities being destroyed by turds. Where does that come from?
I like puke and turds and sweat and all that grossness because it’s all the stuff we’re not allowed to show or talk about. And it’s kind of funny in a way.
Are you into, like, gross sex stuff?
I’m pretty happy if people keep their puke and turds and sweat away from me as I’m going about my daily business. I’m not really into that whole scene. Not every day at least.
How about this, though? Would you eat a piece of your own crap for £1,000?
I hope I wouldn’t ever eat shit—anyone’s shit.
Hang on, but would you rather eat a piece of your own crap for £1,000, drink a mug of your own puke for £1,000, or drink a pint of somebody else’s sweat for £5,000? You HAVE to choose one.
Which would you choose?
Depends how broke I was.
How come you get five times as much for someone else’s sweat?
Because it’s a stranger’s sweat. But it’s guaranteed disease free.
Hmmm, would I get to pick which stranger?
Err, no. It’s a mystery stranger, like strangers usually are.
Hmmm. OK then, I’ll drink the pint of sweat for £5,000.
Ewww, Mimi. You would drink a pint of stranger’s sweat for £5,000. You are disgusting.
It’s less textural than the other two options
How would you feel now that you’ve drunk it if I told you that the sweat came from a gross sweating rapist who’d murdered loads of old grannies? Are you happy with your blood money now?
I’d tell you to fuck off. I’d have to give it to the family of the victims of this mystery stranger’s crimes and of course the victims. What would you do?
I think I would drink the mug of puke.
What if you had to eat your own shit first?
How much? My own or that of a stranger?
Your own.
There’s no bonus £500 for the double whammy of puke and shit?
OK, yeah, you can have an extra £500.
Sure then. No big deal.
You’re sick.
Mimi Leung Admits That She Is Interested in Poop
