The Christo Interviews

Publishing September 2024, HENI is delighted to present Hans Ulrich Obrist’s new book The Christo Interviews, a collection of illustrated conversations between two of the art world’s most esteemed figures, featuring previously unpublished material and Christo’s last ever interview, recorded shortly before his passing.

A compact hardback book, The Christo Interviews brings together a series of conversations between Hans Ulrich Obrist, the pre-eminent commentator on and curator of contemporary art, and Christo, the artist who is best known for the large-scale, site-specific environmental installations he created in collaboration with artistic partner and wife, Jeanne-Claude.

Taking place between December 2012 and May 2020, the interviews provide insight into the individual minds of two of the art world’s most esteemed figures, while also tracking the unfolding of their entire working relationship. Obrist describes these as ‘werksttat interviews’, meaning ‘a workshop or laboratory of words’ and taken together, they also reveal the progress of The London Mastaba, Serpentine Lake, Hyde Park (2016-18), Christo’s first major public outdoor work in the UK, which coincided with an exhibition at the Serpentine Galleries outlining Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s 60-year history of working with oil barrels.

The second collection of monographic interviews by Obrist to be published by HENI, following The Richter Interviews (2023), this reading book is edited in close collaboration with the Christo and Jeanne-Claude Foundation and is fully illustrated with images of finished works, drawings and archival photographs from throughout the duo’s long and successful career.