EVA & ADELE — Biographische Skulptur n° 32 (B-EA-3030, camper Peugeot Boxer), 2020

Emmanuelle Firman

Venue

Musée des Tissus et des Arts décoratifs

Lyon

Based in Berlin, EVA & ADELE made their lives their artwork from the time they met in 1989 until EVA’s passing in 2025

On 11 April 1991, Eva and Adele left behind their surnames, their dates of birth and past to become EVA & ADELE. From then on, they made no distinction between art and everyday life, appearing together in matching clothes and make-up under the motto “Wherever we are is museum”. They described this practice as “Futuring”: making the future in the present. Biographical Sculpture No. 32 is the campervan in which EVA & ADELE travelled more than 200,000 kilometres across Europe. Transport, home and studio, it served as the vehicle for their “living artwork”. Now retired from travel, the pink campervan bears traces of these journeys and encounters. Inside, logbooks recording every kilometre travelled are displayed alongside a slideshow of Polaroids from the series CUM. “Cum”, the Latin word for “with”, expresses a life shared with one another and with the many people encountered who became part of the work.

Presenting themselves as “one conceptual artist,” EVA & ADELE form a single entity embodied collectively, in which notions of identity, individuality, and gender are opened up and blurred through the creation of a twinned existence, expressed in their appearance, clothing, and posture. Working across a wide range of media, including performance, painting, sculpture, and video, EVA & ADELE’s practice unfolds as an ongoing process – a continuous interaction between life, art, the public, and institutions.