Pauline Curnier Jardin is widely recognized for her immersive, transgressive, and deeply theatrical approach to art. Rather than treating her cinematic works as standalone videos, she seamlessly integrates film, performance, sculpture, and elaborate set designs to construct alternative universes.

La Bocca de Rolanda de la Bocca is one of the costumes created for Pauline Curnier Jardin’s performance Rolanda de la Bocca, presented as part of the Fondation Cartier’s Soirées Nomades in 2013. Functioning both as a performative costume and as an autonomous sculptural object, the work exemplifies Curnier Jardin’s characteristic fusion of theatricality, grotesque imagery, opera, and carnivalesque transformation.

The performance centres on Rolanda, a feminised incarnation of Roland, the legendary hero of the Sicilian teatro dei pupi (puppet theatre). Roland entered this tradition through the medieval Chanson de Roland, the Old French epic that recounts the hero’s death at the Battle of Roncevaux and forms part of the broader Carolingian cycle. In Sicily, these narratives were subsequently adapted into the teatro dei pupi, a popular puppet-theatre tradition closely connected to the cunto, a form of oral and sung storytelling in which epic narratives were performed for audiences. It is through this Sicilian tradition that Curnier Jardin’s fascination with the figure of Roland takes shape, transforming the masculine heroic archetype into the exuberantly feminised character of Rolanda.

Resembling a pair of oversized, plush red lips, La Bocca de Rolanda de la Bocca distills this transformation into a sculptural form. The mouth becomes both an object and an agent of performance: a site of speech, song, desire, consumption, and bodily excess, while also evoking the cunto’s tradition of oral narration.

Fondation Cartier's Soirées Nomades, 2013

Pauline Curnier Jardin & Feel Good Cooperative: Triviale, MACRO – Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome, Roma, 2024