Our chat covered a broad range of topics: from being born in a factory in Germany to why the rigidity of her work has established her as one of today’s rising artists, as well as the use of the ancient art of origami in her work and her love of Radio 4 programmes. METAL delves into the psyche of the artist.

My parents are both artists. The main aspect of my creativity comes from them. 

I grew up in the Black Forest in Germany, in an old matchstick factory where I happened to be born alongside my younger brother. We ran around freely through the fields and would make houses. We had a free lifestyle and upbringing. I didn't know what I wanted to do as a child I just knew it would end up focused on art. Watching my mother use a darkroom was what kick-started my passion for photography. Although my work is dark and serious, there's a childish, playful naivety and innocence about it. Since I grew up making things I think I’ve carried over those techniques into my work even if it's just making a prop for a picture.

I really like paintings from that era. If I photograph someone I like to make them rigid and awkward in the sense of pose and how they feel. I think it adds another depth to the photograph. If they don't look awkward, it makes for a boring picture that doesn't look right. I try to make work that you don't look at once and then immediately walk away. You have to read more into what I do, see what’s going on, what's happened, how did I come up with some techniques. I want people to stare at my work and think.

It’s changed greatly in recent times. Since graduating, it's evolved in style, colour and form, but has more core elements. For Cosmic Surgery I created origami flowers, sewed them all together and attached headbands to them so I could put them on and then photograph myself in them. It’s about obscuring one's face. Through doing it, I realized it wasn't the most comfortable thing to wear so I didn't want to put someone else through it. I then came with the idea of folding the face and playing with ‘the fold'. I printed off the photograph of the face and then folded it multiple times and put it back onto the original photograph. I go through stages where I want to put something on someone's face and I then have to find the best and most comfortable way of attaching it to their face without hurting them. It’s a 3D piece and I have to think about how am I going to produce this photograph. The multiple photographing and the image scanning with the origami piece attached to it, causes a loss of colour due to the process, but it adds texture and depth to the final photograph.

It wasn't as much a reading on society's idea of cosmetic surgery and the chance to distort or change one's facial appearance. I grew up with dyslexia and, on one occasion, I came home to my family and started having a conversation about cosmic surgery. My mother later corrected me, ‘Don’t you mean cosmetic surgery?’ It made sense to use this as a title, although I’m not an artist to focus on the reality but more on the unreality and non-existent things. The people in the photographs represent the next generation from us - the ‘alien people’. The mother and father (the first generation) aren't defaced, but the others (the next generation) are. Cosmic surgery is a playful statement on that. 

I love that you can read so many different ideas into it - there's the idea that it's about the next generation being consumed with technology and the concept of hiding one's face being a computer screen consuming technology and information. Then, there's the idea of living in an age of cameras surrounding us, filming us all the time; it’s impossible to hide your face any longer!  The little girl in Cosmic Surgery though, she’s covered in eyes and she's become unrecognizable as she's completely mashed up and distorted in the face. In this sense she's lost all her 'identity'. Many people don't see the eyes but focus more on the brutality and darkness of the image at first, most see it as a defaced person and all they have to read from it is their clothing and bodies.It isn't until further examination of the image does one notice the origami eyes.

With Cosmic Surgery, each one is a unique fold and each fold is done multiple times to get the right shape on the face. Although it's meaningless, it has hidden depth and intent in it. I wanted to see how much of the face and the eyes I could have on the photograph. On the other hand, my other project 'Paper' is more playful with each picture having its own story and a different shape like a parrot or a plane. 

It’s changed a lot lately - Tim Walker and Tom Hunter, who does recreations from paintings. Erwin Wurm- he's work is brilliant with these really amazingly strange sculptures and photography. They are other ones but I’ve forgotten their names.

I think I’ve set myself quite a difficult challenge trying to move on from the Cosmic Surgery series as that's set my name and I’m still figuring out where to go from there. All the new projects I’m working on right now are quite different. I’ll always be known for my paper aesthetic, which I don't mind; it's just moving it along towards a bigger thing. It’s like the second album syndrome where the first album is received well and then the second album can either be hit or miss. I’ve got the style down in what I’m about, but should I do something different? Otherwise I risk being a one trick pony. Every project I do has a seamless continuous thread to it and goes from one to another effortlessly. Cosmic Surgery was a product of my self-portraits.

Yes - I feel the need of having to do something different and stepping outside my comfort zone. I’m now doing band photographs and advertising campaigns where I’m using my techniques in a different way.

Most of the time it's companies approaching me and asking me to collaborate with them. They ask me to do a photo story, into which I can’t put my own touch, so it is quite limiting. I recently did an advert for an American television show called ‘Perception’. They hadn't realized that I was a photographer as well as a paper folder/prop maker, so they got two for the price of one - bonus!!  

That was after I finished graduating. I lived in a very small town, so I had no one willing to be a lamb to the slaughter for me. I just had myself to experiment ideas on. I did a lot of projects to get myself back into the groove of things. Using myself was a great starting point for me to know what I wanted to do and what I wanted it to look like. If you look at the video of the '10 second project' you'll see an example of me working alone. In it, I record and photograph myself playing hide and seek. The idea for this came from my mother, who thought it would be good to capture the moment on film. It also brings my work back to the idea of it being based on childhood, as my dad used to film my brother and I playing hide and seek when we lived in Germany. Getting into that small space to hide is the funniest part of the whole experience. It’s great to have the film of me getting into the space alongside the final photographed work.

There’s a website where people upload videos of themselves doing the same thing from all over the world. Amsterdam, Indonesia, America and Canada following the 10-second project rules and hiding. The videos are hilarious. I’ve always had a thing of never showing my face, so in my film I try not to reveal it. I’m always hiding and running back to the camera in a way that I can obscure my face with my hair.

It used to be an obstacle when I had a smaller printer. Doing Cosmic Surgery images on a small printer I would print them on multiple sheets of paper because I would need the image to be at least A3 size, so I could fold their faces. On an A4 sheet the origami shape would become too small and pointless. Now that I have a big printer I can do it all without a need to follow a scan and multiple print process.

I’m really proud of the Ventriloquist and the Cosmic Surgery series. Those two are the ones I’m most proud of but I’m struggling the most to move on from. I have so many ideas that I need to commit to and do. They are quite ambitious, so they'll end up taking longer than I would like them to. I get quite impatient sometimes.

I have just had a show in Toronto which came to London and later next year goes to Boston as part of the Flash Forward 2013. I don’t really reveal my future work, until I have more of an idea how it will turn out.

When I’m not doing any work, which is not very often, I like watching ‘Breaking Bad’ and listening to Radio 4 and Radio 6. I love all the comedies and ‘Just A Minute’, which my family play occasionally amongst themselves. I listen to the ‘Museum Of Curiosity’, to which I tweeted to ask when they’d be back on so I can go watch it live. ‘Woman's Hour’ and ‘Desert Island Discs’ are great as well, and I find the complaints show rather funny to listen to. Lately, when I’ve been listening to it, it's been people complaining that something's been said that the school kids have heard while on summer holiday. I constantly quote information I’ve heard from Radio 4 to my boyfriend.