I’m not entirely convinced by Bruce Sterling’s love of Cibelle. He says of the ‘Abravanista’ movement around her:
So the Abravanista crowd are a kind of “oh fuck off” counterculture who have gone into a vibrant, post-traumatic creative scene. It’s this air of surreal nihilism that puts some iron in their bones. It’s why I take them seriously and consider them global-scale trend-setters as an art movement.
Also entertaining is that she’s very firm about being based in Dalston — in the same way as artists of other generations might emphasise being in the Castro, or the Greenwich Village, or the Left Bank. Queue laughter from all my father’s generation