DI: I don’t remember that I ever considered my work as a career. It almost seems that I trusted in providence to provide; whether I had money or not never really changed what I did or how I did it. Thanks to the help over the years of close friends, a few collectors, now and then a grant, and various gigs teaching at art schools—and my mother, who never suspected I was in need—I came through. Anyway, once the journey I had to make was clear to me, I would have done it wherever necessary.

ML : There’s this beautiful quote your friend Jan Voss wrote about you: “She determined herself which hierarchy she would acknowledge and which to laugh away.”

DI: Yes, that is a nice line.

ML : I’m wondering if you feel that hierarchies have changed for you personally, or if you think the hierarchies are different for people today?

DI: Let me see, what hierarchies could I say I acknowledge? Well, the greatest poetry, the greatest artists, the greatest love stories in history—those don’t change. As for the ones I laugh away, how about the art market, for an opener? Now that we’ve met, Melissa, I hope you’ll come to visit again, and that we’ll get to know each other and become friends.

ML : I’d love to come back the next time I’m in Berlin. Can I bring my husband and Sid, the little rascal?

DI: Yes, definitely. I want to see how Sid is pulling his 50 percent. "Do Not Go Genitally" originally appeared in the February 2008 issue of Modern Painters. For a complete list of articles from Modern Painters available on ARTINFO, click here.