Why was it important for you to paint the wall?
It was like a delivery, to show that I am stronger than the wall; I can paint it. I had no idea about the political aspect of the wall, because at school in France we never learned anything about the wall, about that system of West Berlin surrounded by a wall, with East Germany inside. I had no idea what it was all about. Some people were very aggressive because they thought I was paid to make the wall beautiful. I had to stop sometimes and answer them, saying, “No you cant make the wall beautiful because it is a deadly border, and even if you put thousands of kilos of colours on the wall, this wall will never be beautiful.” It was important to repeat this all the time, because it was very emotional at the wall.
Are the designs symbolic?
Yes, they are now in a lot of countries a symbol of the new freedom in Europe. There are pieces of the Berlin wall almost everywhere now, in Los Angeles, New York, Yokohama. It is a symbol of the new freedom that is not coming from the sky, freedom that is not given to you, but that you have to fight for. If you look now on Wikipedia, you will see new walls all around the world. The speech of the new wall-makers is ‘do not compare these with the Berlin wall, they are nothing to do with it’, but I think, of course it’s the same, a wall is a wall and the reason is different but the wall is still there, and one day this wall also will disappear.
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