barbara chase—riboud, welcome to hardtalk. thank you. sitting here at a major exhibition of your work called infinite folds, and you started your artistic training at the age of seven. how on earth did you know at that early age that you wanted to become an artist? i didn't know i wanted to be an artist. it was my mother and my grandmother who decided that i was going to have something to do with the arts. they weren't quite sure what. you were 16 and you were the youngest person to ever have a work acquired by moma, the museum of modern art in new york. it was reba, which was a woodcut print of a young girl with a plant next to her. and you have said that "success as a child came easily to me," and that "i grew up as a confident, curious child, "not willing to settle for anything but the best." were you always very ambitious from an early age? i wouldn't call it ambition. i didn't know what it was. i knew that i wanted to do something, you know, significant, but i had no idea what and i had no idea how. and i had no concept of the world

that's marc riboud, the late french photographer.f opened up a whole new universe to me, which was international, which was... ..had nothing to do with america or europe or africa, but had to do with everything. and so i became this kind of country—hopping, international, you know, explorer, whatever, that i had started in egypt on my own with him, which lasted 20 years. so he opened up a whole new world for you. but you always maintained this interest in monuments, as you said, and i want to ask you about the controversy that we have been debating all over the world, really, about the role of monuments in society. here in the united kingdom, for instance, the 17th century slave trader edward colston had his statue torn down by an angry crowd and they threw it into the water. you have had the controversies in the united states about confederate statues and so on. where do you stand on this? should monuments come down if some people deem them offensive? where? well, my stance on that is very famous. my stance on that is what i did wit

london where there is a major exhibition of the work of the renowned american artist barbara chase—riboud and poet. throughout her long career, barbara has been fascinated by public memorials and her sculptures honour various historical and culturalfigures. but how should society commemorate controversial

london where there is a major exhibition of the work of the renowned american artist barbara chase—riboudarbara has been fascinated by public memorials and her sculptures honour