WRITINGS
EVE ❤ SPORT by Paul Ardenne
French artist Corinne Fhima refuses to embody the ordinary figure we all are in everyday life. She aims elsewhere, and higher: to be Superwoman, or Wonder Woman even, a superheroine endowed with superpowers, the new, larger-than-life Eve. This mental transmutation finds its sartorial expression in a blonde wig, high-heeled boots or thigh-highs, a bodysuit or shorts revealing her legs. Her resemblance to a cheerleader, pom-pom girl or Las Vegas showgirl should not mislead us: this woman is “powerful.”
She is playful, too, and happens to love sport and athletic competition. This gives her the opportunity to venture into territory that, at first glance, is none of her business: male-dominated sports such as American football and basketball. Eve leaps, seizes the ball and thumbs her nose at the men on the field. A true star, always joyful, smiling and relaxed. For this larger-than-life Eve, living is a game, a celebration: a celebration of the body and of the tricks played on opponents who can hardly believe their eyes. Sport, it is said, is the continuation of war by other means. Here, instead, optimism and joy triumph. Pure, carefree exhilaration.
There is, as one might expect, a certain degree of irony. Corinne Fhima, for all her performance of mock innocence, does not appropriate these human myths of superpower represented by superheroes without reason. Their purpose is, on the one hand, to signify human powerlessness and, on the other, to console us for it, to avenge us. Corinne Fhima’s new Eve avenges the feminine—and, more broadly, humanity—for its shortcomings. Through her, we see more clearly who we might become, how we might finally turn into those “superior humans” dreamed of by every civilization, in the enduring fantasy of Übermenschlichkeit, of Nietzschean superhumanity. Zarathustra remains an imaginary figure? Perhaps, but nothing prevents us from putting on his coat.
There is no sporting hero or heroine whose brilliant career does not generate a profusion of merchandise: decorated balls, T-shirts and trinkets of every kind. The new sport-loving Eve intends to pamper her fans, offering them a whole range of products celebrating her glory, certain to delight her aficionados. This collection of trophies “extends” the body of Eve, the magnificent athlete; it consolidates and recounts her legend, carrying it into our locker rooms, living rooms and bedrooms. How could we fail to feel honored by this devotional proximity to the heroine? How could we resist the pleasure of possessing these amulets, which symbolically transmit a little of her power to us? Relics of a body that is very much alive, dynamic and hyperbolic. Eve loves sport, and she is generous. She lightens our lives, offering us her smile and her self-confidence—to us, her rightful admirers.
The kitsch in which Corinne Fhima molds her images—skillful photomontages—and the fetish objects associated with them deliberately echoes popular aesthetics, with their abundance of color, simple and generous forms, and strong visual impact. This display of visuality also serves a binding function. It magnetizes our gaze, catches us by the retina: an effective way of drawing us in. With Corinne Fhima’s Eve, ultimately, nothing seems impossible—and this is precisely what, deep down, we were waiting to hear, ready to identify with this singular heroine, as though she had stepped out of a 1940s American comic book to elevate us.
Thank you to her; thank you to our new Mother Superior. She shows us the path toward the identity we dream of.
Paul Ardenne
Historian, art historian, curator and French writer
Objectifying, Savouring Art
2022
Yves Sabourin
Since the beginning of her career in the 1990s, French visual artist Corinne Fhima has built, carved, scratched and shaped multiple perspectives, both through the media she has discovered and developed and through her aesthetic expressions, boldly combining what she learned during her training with her own research. She is an artist with a multidisciplinary DNA.
Painting and its representations certainly form the original ground from which her later forms of expression would emerge, alongside three inseparable attitudes: humour, irreverence and seriousness. In her practice, the artist freely explores materials both commonplace and unexpected. She has clearly understood that throughout the history of our civilisations, textiles—with their techniques and forms, so often treated as somehow secondary—have been intimately bound up with artistic creation.
As early as 1989, one need only look at LILI PEAU D’CHIEN, where paint perfectly evokes the fabrics of the clothing. From 1992 onwards, textiles are either physically present in her work or subtly permeate it, as in her totemic motif, the pig. In COCHON FEU DE LA RAMPE, Corinne Fhima places the animal on mattress ticking. In 1996, her exploration of the porcine silhouette continues in the pictorial exuberance of COCHON UNITED COLORS, recalling the advertising campaigns of the Italian clothing brand United Colors of Benetton. Then, in COCHON OPTIMISME DÉMESURÉ, an installation composed of a canvas on which the artist paints the pig as an animal destined for consumption, the creature appears to contemplate its own fate, materialised by an enormous sausage made from fabric in the colours of cured meat. In 2002, the artist created PIG REVISITED ENERGY, modelling and stuffing an enormous wounded flying pig in grey felt, bandaged with a red cross. It enters into dialogue with three galvanised-steel basins set on stools, in which immaculate white plastic bones simmer in blood-red felt: a tribute to Joseph Beuys.
In 2005, Corinne Fhima physically incorporated herself into her work. In TO BE, the artist places at its centre a digitised photograph of her naked body, its intimate areas blurred, surrounded by several pigs. Through painting, digital sublimation and video imagery embellished with trimmings, camouflage patterns invade the work, extending all the way to her boots. The same motif appears in VENUS (2005), in which the artist playfully transposes Botticelli’s goddess—painted green with orange hair—onto camouflage fabric, followed by a libidinous snail made of strawberry-red synthetic fabric.
In 2008, for EVE WAITING FOR LOVE, Corinne Fhima, as Eve, depicts herself in a photograph sublimated onto tarpaulin, seen from behind in red boots against a background of orange stripes covered in graffiti. The image is paired with a painting of a pig’s head on a butcher’s stall, while three cactus sculptures made from mattress ticking and red imitation leather stand on the floor in front of it. From this point onwards, the artist begins giving volume to her textile photographs: she cuts them out, backs them, joins them with stitching and adds padding. In 2011, EVE CHASSE PÊCHE TRADITION appears, with Eve floating in shallow relief over the representation of an Oriental rug.
In 2012, Corinne Fhima knowingly heightens the sensual intensity of her work, turning herself into an object of desire—an edible desire. She dresses herself anew, adopting costumes tinged with erotic fantasy and populated by heroines. With EVE WAITING FOR THE WOLF, the work takes the form of an enormous polystyrene food tray in which Eve, dressed as Little Red Riding Hood, nestles beneath vacuum-sealed wrapping. Between 2017 and 2018, performance enters her practice: the artist, dressed as Wonder Woman, walks through the streets of Paris under the banner EVE DELIVERY IN, distributing “vacuum-packed trays of art” bearing her own image.
In 2019, in Guangzhou, China, Corinne Fhima created her first large-scale wall relief, EVE PARADISE OK, measuring 300 × 300 × 25 cm. It depicts a hand with a clenched fist and raised thumb—the “OK” gesture—like a flower bed turned upright and shaped from artificial fabric flowers, among which inflatable pool toys seem to float. The artist reworked the piece in 2021 for the Larnaca Biennale in Cyprus. Meanwhile, in 2019, Corinne Fhima created a second relief, TWITT PARADISE, inspired by Twitter’s chirping blue bird.
Corinne Fhima moves with ease through these artistic shifts, mastering both meaning and composition. She has demonstrated this throughout the development of her work, transforming virtually any material into an artistic medium and gathering sources of inspiration without prejudice. Since 2021, sport has entered her playground. Eve dons all manner of jerseys and shorts for the series EVE LOVES SPORT, a ruthless universe in which the exhilaration of players and supporters mingles with the limitless commercialisation of logos across every imaginable surface.
Through her work, Corinne Fhima demonstrates that art must contain an unwavering notion of freedom, a space in which artistic expression flourishes through both rigour and transgression. Her work unfolds naturally, taking material form through a critical and constructive reflection on art and its movements, incorporating materials, substances and repurposed objects.
Yves Sabourin
Curator · Artistic Director · Author · Lecturer · Consultant
Honorary Inspector of Artistic Creation
French Ministry of Culture