Artistic statement
Through her ceramics, FufuLène channels her anti-species, social, and feminist concerns into tangible forms. She particularly focuses on our complex interwoven relationship with our body, our emotions and our identity, ranging from the most trivial, to the most intimate and taboo, which she analysis as the perpetual tension between individuality and society. As an artist, she aims to spark reflection through an aesthetics, that could be described as an uncanny, uneasy, yet unapologetic poetics of social affects and conventions.
On the one hand, FufuLène explores our shared humanity, despite feeling it in the isolation or intimacy of our being. In her series and installations ‘With my guts’, she gives shape to very carnal ceramic artworks. They depicts the powerful affections that arise through one's slow daily work on oneself, such as when we work deeply and strain to adapt, conform or surpass ourselves, and the feelings both beautiful and cruel, it generates deep in our own guts.
With my guts, 2023
Wet Dreams II, 2023
On the other hand, she questions certain social conventions, stereotypes or taboos that can still make us feel ‘inappropriate’, particularly as women, such as our collective aversion to body fluids. Her series on menstruation addresses its lack of representation in our daily life, and thus invites us to free discussion on this topic. Meanwhile, her series of ‘wet dreams’ fountains puts the cyprin as main protagonist of the representation of female pleasure, and as such departs from classic representations via the objectification of the female body. Both denounces how the uneven abnegation of our animality serves the patriarchy. As such, her work invites us to rethink the society that we believe to be modern, liberal and in which we can all flourish freely.
Finally, her work dialogues with pieces that analyse our relation with nature, as in the example of the artwork entitled ‘it makes me nut’. The walnut, normally insignificant in size, is presented oversized to reclaim its importance and as such the importance of nature, but also to sublimate its beauty and complexity. Its appearance and size, similar to a human brain, also serve as a reminder that we are also an element of it.
It makes me nuts, 2022
FufuLène often works in series, but only creates unique pieces. Surrealism, kitsch and cubism, among others, influence her work, and her interest in associating the organic liveliness of fluids with the sculptural permeates her aesthetic. Depending on her design, her ceramic pieces are either hand built, wheel-thrown or created through casts, made of low-temperature or high-temperature clay. Some are even combined with other mediums such as wood or fabrics, as she takes care only to use environmental friendly processes and materials. Drawn to details, she sculpts the clay with an almost surgical process.
FufuLène defines herself as a critical artist, but she is also obsessed with volume and geometry. When not expressing her concerns in her work, whether using words or through clay, FufuLène flees with making geometric or abstract pieces and drawings.