What first made you want to be an artist?
I’d like to answer that it was the fact of spending hours in the 70s as a toddler in my Dad’s jazz record shop, but actually it wasn’t. I don’t know at all what happened to me. I might have been slightly deranged.

Your new exhibition draws on the relationship between Josephine Baker and Le Corbusier. What first drew you to those artists?
I read about an affair between Le Corbusier and Josephine Baker. It happened during a cruise on a transatlantic boat. Le Corbusier is said to have dressed as Josephine Baker as a way to seduce the African-American star. She told him, ‘What a pity you’re an architect, Monsieur. You’d make a sensational partner.’ I’m fascinated by the story: Le Corbusier dressed as a black dancer, the reunion between the exotic body language of the dancer and the rationale mind of the architect etc … Plus I find Josephine Baker’s way of turning him down quite witty.

This is the first time you’ve made your own body a subject in your work. Was that a difficult decision to make?
I used my body a lot as teenager when I was practising as a ballet dancer. But since then I have preferred using the bodies of people I find fun, interesting looking, and whose company makes me happy, like my friends and family. That said, I like dancing alone in my studio too.

Which other living artist should be better known than they currently are?
By ‘other’ do you suggest I should be better known that I currently am? Should I take this as a dubious compliment? The answer to this question is my husband (a sculptor) and my father (a writer). And also Jason McPhail.

Lili Reynaud-Dewar, Mary Mary, Glasgow, until Sat 14 Jan.