SARAH LUCAS

During the mid-’80s, Britain was dominated by macho formal sculptors like Tony Cragg, Richard Wentworth, and Richard Deacon. I’ve got quite macho inclinations in a certain way and reacted by thinking that my identity as a woman had to be a part of the work: all the things about how I am, which largely weren’t chosen by me. The sculpture had to have some content that mattered to life in general. I suppose that’s why I did self-portraits, realizing that using one’s identity could be a dynamic thing—like it was for Gilbert & George, and Andy Warhol. But I also turned to feminists like Andrea Dworkin. So I made formal sculptures that still reflected a climate of ideas.

—As told to Tim Griffin