Stay informed with free updates
Simply sign up to the Life & Arts myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.
-
What is your earliest memory?
Porridge and prunes at nursery school, and kids wearing their coats with just the hoods on their heads, as superheroes, and a graveyard where I heard — or imagined that I heard — a choir of children singing. -
Who was or still is your mentor?
I got a lot of support. The first person who was ready to invest in me at an institutional level was the late Donna Lynas, a visionary curator and director. But, mentor . . . do you know what, I’m 43, and I’m just now ready to get some mentors and teachers. I’m ready to start listening to people. -
How fit are you?
I live with a neurological disease, and it’s a blessing, because it’s given me reason to really stay very engaged with my body. So at the moment I’m plenty fit enough, but I have to take care. -
Tell me about an animal you have loved.
My daughter! -
Risk or caution, which has defined your life more?
Risk and entropy — and probably not much good sense. I’ve lived a lot of different lives and done a lot of different things. I went a non-standard route — I made my own way. I did some stuff that I thought was a bad decision, then later came to understand that it was all leading somewhere. There was a method in the madness. -
What trait do you find most irritating in others?
Hypocrisy. Moral cowardice. Emotional cowardice. -
What trait do you find most irritating in yourself?
Ambivalence, disavowal. Let’s leave it at that! -
What drives you on?
Wild curiosity. And love for the world and everything in it. Because of that love, sometimes I get really angry or very sad. Then I get curious again, and I want to know what happens next, and I want to try different things and I want to understand things. So I keep going. -
Do you believe in an afterlife?
It’s self-evident that everything has some form of afterlife: the petrochemicals we dig out of the ground used to be our ancestors, now they’re plastic bags, and they’re going to outlive us all. When somebody dies, the imprint of that person in the lives that were impacted by that person remains for as long as it remains. So on a phenomenological level, there is some form of afterlife. I’m agnostic about what that means at the spiritual level, but I don’t see why it wouldn’t be connected. -
Which is more puzzling, the existence of suffering or its frequent absence?
There is no absence. I don’t remember the provenance of this quote, but I hold it quite close: life is full of suffering and the only suffering that can be avoided is the suffering that comes from trying to avoid suffering. I don’t find it puzzling at all that there’s suffering in everything — that’s the name of the game. -
Name your favourite river.
The old Thames, the river I know best, the Isis that runs where I grew up. The Tyne, which is pretty impressive. And the Avon. -
What would you have done differently?
Nothing. You can’t give your time to these sorts of thoughts. I’m a revisionist, determinist optimist. Which means: if it happened, it was supposed to happen, and if it happened and was supposed to happen, then it’s good that it happened.
Jesse Darling is winner of the 2023 Turner Prize. The Turner Prize exhibition is at Towner Eastbourne until April 14
Follow @FTMag to find out about our latest stories first
