Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Untitled (_2000937), 2017. — Paul Mpagi Sepuya, *Untitled (_2000937)*, 2017.

ISABELLA KAZANECKI: Your success as of late is impressive if not exponential. I even saw you on a HelmutLang t-shirt! It seems as if you were an overnight success, although you've been at this for 10+ years. How hasthis exposure affected your practice?

PAUL MPAGI SEPUYA:I am exhausted. I hardly have any time to make work and that's difficult. I've been at this for 15 years, and it's amazing to have this show up at the Blaffer Museum that originated at CAM St. Louis with a survey of work from 2005 - 2018 and look back at all the different lives I had as an artist. The kind of work I do necessarily couldn't be an overnight success, each project builds on elements going back to my first works. Subjects in the work have been featured across projects. Conversations have taken years. And I want to keep working. I recently was able to hire a wonderful studio manager who I got to know and trust when he was working at Team Gallery's Venice Beach bungalow. I want to say no to the interviews, the visits and lecture requests - everything - and get back to having time to explore and make the work and nurture the friendships and relationships that make the work possible. But I am thankful for the audience that has recently come to and supported the work. I am most thankful for the folks who have been along for the entire journey. And here I am, on another flight finding time for another interview.

ISABELLA: I'm interested in your take on the concept of the collage. You're known to photograph photos of bodies with physical bodies. How has your work evolved to this point?

PAUL: It's not always bodies; it's fragments of material that come from making, editing, working in my studio as material piles up. But it began in the darkroom when I would take snapshots as "notes" while printing, editing, and color correcting. It expanded to photographing and rephotographing material around my Brooklyn home and those times I had access to studio spaces

Read the full interview in Musée Magazine Issue 23: Choices, available here.