French artist Pauline Curnier Jardin (born 1980) at the presentation of her twenty-year retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Antwerp (M HKA), admitted to journalists that she feels like a “Mediterranean artist” – as she was born in Marseille. In my view, the key word to describe Pauline’s work is feminism. Don’t yawn at the word: when talent and conceptual thinking come together – Pauline emphasised in conversation that her projects are not unconscious surrealism but the product of intellect – she creates some of the most intriguing art objects. Acting as an anthropologist-artist, she explores local traditions.
At the heart of the exhibition, the artist has installed a stage hosting a vibrant programme in tune with her work – discussions with community organisations, performances, film screenings, lectures and workshops. Pauline’s artistic method lies in the careful distortion of reality to highlight its beauty and contradictions. Her work turns Europe into a central protagonist — at once the setting, witness and co-author – revealed through its suburbs and big cities such as Rome, Berlin and Noisy-le-Sec, through its beliefs, popular practices, traumas and celebrations. Her artistic practice is shaped by two key motifs: the exploration of forms of cultural expression such as carnival, travelling cinema, circus, processions or nativity plays, and the practice of gathering – within a collective, family, community, association or troupe. A profoundly feminine body of work.
Pauline Curnier Jardin’s installation “Ainsi font font font…” (2022) is dedicated to a distinct Neapolitan tradition. The artist commissioned a master craftsman of Christmas cribs, Fabio Paolella, to create an unusual “presepe” (nativity scene) in the form of a rocky grotto. All the figurines are made of ceramic and, in their style, reminded me of French poupées paysannes (I even have a small collection of those).
In Naples, there exists the tradition of “anime del purgatorio”, literally “souls of purgatory” – a unique form of popular devotion in which anonymous skulls from catacombs or ossuaries are adopted by the faithful. Parishioners take them under their care: they clean, decorate and tend to the skulls, lighting candles and bringing flowers. These souls are considered intermediaries between the living and God, and caring for them is believed to bring spiritual merit – a duty typically performed by women. For those not born in Naples, the tradition might appear rather macabre – yet in Pauline’s presepe there is so much humour that it ultimately takes on the tone of dark comedy.
The central figure in this new version is Lela, the owner of a pizzeria, who appears twice: on the middle level of the three-storey grotto as a pizzaiola (accompanied by four female assistants), and on the lower level as one of the women who treats the skulls in the Franciscan church of Santa Luciella ai Librai in central Naples – famous for its “skull with ears” (Cranio con le orecchie). Under Napoleon, this ritual was officially banned, yet it survived underground. Lela now leads a small women’s group dedicated to the care of these souls. When she was seventeen, she once entered a crypt with friends and dreamt that night of a young soldier killed in the First World War – a vision she took as the twin of her own soul. Since then, she has devoted her life to the anime purgatorio.
Next to Lela stands another woman – one who leaves her newborn illegitimate child in the foundling drawer of a church (another tradition of a patriarchal society). On the upper level, Pauline depicts yet another Neapolitan custom: a ritual of fertility linked to the house of Santa Maria Francesca delle Cinque Piaghe, an eighteenth-century Catholic saint known for her stigmata and deep compassion. Her home in the Quartieri Spagnoli district has been transformed into a chapel, where a special chair remains – women sit and pray there for the gift of a child. Pauline has arranged tiny vials of sperm beside it (we were too shy to ask about its origin), as if in a church souvenir shop. The husband of the infertile woman turns his back to the scene – sceptical, yet perhaps still hoping for a miracle. The chapel is especially crowded on 6 October, the saint’s feast day, when believers gather for communal prayer and ritual.
Every character and tradition in Pauline’s installation is drawn from real life – and in Naples, you can indeed visit the church, the pizzeria, and the house of Santa Maria Francesca yourself.
Pauline’s anthropological and artictic project sheds light on contemporary Catholic traditions in their inseparable connection with pagan practices. The artist contrasts popular religiosity – vivid, bodily, feminine, and sensuous – with the official culture of the Church, which is abstract, disciplinary, and patriarchal. In her hands, the nativity scene becomes a ritual of liberation, and the skull transforms into a symbol of memory and cyclical renewal rather than death.