Interview
Emma-Claire Fierce
Emma-Claire Fierce is a French transdisciplinary artist working at the intersection of contemporary art, ocean performance, endurance swimming and cartographic drawing. Her practice explores the ocean as both a medium and a methodology, transforming movement, navigation and embodied research into art. She is the creator of OCEANS7VEN SW(E)[E](A)THEART, an ongoing transoceanic collection in which she draws heart-shaped forms directly in the ocean through swimming performance. Each work is created in relation to a specific territory, connecting geography, memory, marine environments and human presence. The collection brings together the ocean performance, its cartographic trace and a material artwork, transforming an ephemeral act into a lasting artistic record. Her work has been exhibited in France and is represented online by Saatchi Art. She is listed in the UNESCO Ocean Expert Directory and was named in Marquis Who’s Who in 2025. Through her practice, Emma-Claire Fierce develops a living cartography of the ocean, creating works that emerge from specific territories and become lasting records of their landscapes, waters and histories.
What is your background and how did you start your journey in the art world?
“I started my art career in 2018, even though I had been introduced to the practices of the art world as a young woman during my studies at the Conservatoire de Picturologie de Lyon and later at the Beaux-Arts de Nantes. I have been sensitive to art since childhood. I wrote poems for my maternal grandmother. I remember that I was not even 15 when I would go by myself to the MAMC (Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain) of Saint-Étienne. I would spend hours there, drawing from the artworks I was exposed to. So I drew from artists like Klein, Picasso, Warhol, Kandinsky, Duchamp, and Lichtenstein. There were also strong female artists there, such as Louise Bourgeois, Cindy Sherman, Annette Messager, Marina Abramović, Barbara Kruger, ORLAN, and Niki de Saint Phalle, by whom I was deeply touched with her balloon shooting artwork. Being exposed to this level of art at such a young age, in a city that was purely made of industry, definitely helped and had an impact on me. Art was always my way to cope with this life in which nothing or no one gave me signs that I belonged there, except art. And the ocean made me feel the same. I guess this is the reason why in 2019 I cried in Japan, facing the ocean I was going to create in. I guess this is the reason why I have found a way to merge the two after years of professional practice as an artist. My work with the ocean came logically, organically. It was so natural that it felt as if this was meant to be since the origin. I have to admit, after the first piece was created in 2024, it took me months to understand where I was landing, and then years to develop the swimming in heart-shape technique. After I finished developing that unique technique in 2026, it felt like a homecoming after a very long exodus. I am happy this errancy is over now.”
What does your work aim to say? Does it comment on any current social or political issues?
“My work and art act as a reminder. Each piece is a reminder of the beauty, the simplicity, the love, the profound adjustments of the world’s dimensions, reality, and mechanics. Sometimes there are very poetic, sometimes there are much more pop, and most of the time there are ocean elements in the pieces that remind us where we come from and what we are composed of. Art is my forever playground and this is as serious as art is. It is true there is a mind gap to jump to access this level. I had always been on the other side, only it took me years to understand it. I think this is this reflection that made my book ‘Art Consciousness’ came to life. Even when I was creating on paper and with ink in 2018–2019, away from the deep bond with the ocean that I have developed over the years, the link to the core elements was there: water, pigments, matter. So it feels like it has always been about touching the fundamentals of it all and somehow I have been working with them since the beginning.
Art is as my playground as it is my field of experimentation. I think this is one of the reasons why I don’t dive into politics or social issues. It is true I’ve been approached by quite a few people who wanted to involve me politically through my art. It was rarely explicit; it often felt more like they were subtly trying to influence me or bring me onto their side. I think it is because to them art is a tool to promote what they want. This is not how I live art, and me being driven by it since childhood shows how much politics is out of the picture for me. I refuse to let my art delve into those subjects because I seek to impact more of the universal layers of the world, the ones that transcend local times or concerns. Of course, I may be impacted by them. For instance, I had swims planned in some islands of the world, and due to political instability, I had to cancel them to protect myself. This is a waste because it deprives the public and local people of beautiful memories and local employment, as much as locally created patrimony and, to some extent, wealth. My opinion has little importance on this; I only face the results of their choices and what it makes of them. In the end, I am the artist, and my job is to create beauty. So I create beauty where it is respected, valued and appreciated. That’s it.”
Do you plan your work in advance, or is it improvisation?
“When I create, I often feel like I go inside myself to an unspoken or unconscious side of myself, or it can be inside a kind of connected field to get my ideas and create. When I create in this way, I have no plans at all. I simply start and things evolve as they evolve. For me, this is not difficult to do, it is a very natural and intuitive process. I think that we all have an energy field, and this field can also connect to the larger fields. Our heart is a very powerful toroidal energy field, and it connects outwards and around us. At other times, I do have a specific plan. Often when I create a collage, I might be inspired by something in nature. It can be something as simple and beautiful as a try, or the colors in the sky during the sunset. In the case of collages, I used to lay out papers in layers and be very specific. As I become more and more comfortable with the format, there is much less planning. However, I often do think of some general colors to collect to start the project. I might have a sense of working with blue and green and start by collecting pieces of this color. After this, it may diverge and go in different directions. As far as planning, I do not sketch or create something specific before by hand. I find even when I have a more specific plan before hand, things can take shape very differently than what I had planned. Sometimes, the painting has something to say, or perhaps I did not listen to what was inside me trying to come out, and I have to keep going until this is reached and resolved.”
Are there any art world trends are you following?
“I don’t really follow trends. I have tried from time to time, but it’s simply not my thing. I prefer to follow my own research and let the work evolve naturally.”
What process, materials and techniques do you use to create your artwork?
“I am somehow a combination of a versatile and faithful artist in these traits. Before, I would have said I was completely open to new processes depending on the goals, aka the creation I wanted to make. Now that I have embraced Islam, I am much more careful to respect all the precautions of my faith within my work. For instance, I have created a new swimming costume to make sure I was properly covered while swimming like a mermaid. In my practice, the desired artwork can require me to invent the means of making it. In the sense that if I want to create an art piece and there is no current means available for me to do it, then I have additional work in process. Either I will have to discover or to create the means that will allow me to respect my faith while creating my art. This means that from time to time depending on the piece, creativity in my art is shown not in the final result, rather in how or what has been used or created to obtain the final piece. I think this is one of the reasons why it took me three to four years to understand how I would transform my swimming technique in the ocean to align it with the depths of my soul. Now it is a unique technique entirely custom made. This has been a long road, and the best thing is that I feel it in the peace I swim with now.
Sometimes I discover I have developed something just lieu of necessity and evolution of use. For instance I have recently recognized that I used a digital Fauvist technique alternating between additive aggregation and subtractive removal. I was doing it for weeks, only the name of it and recognition came later. It is a natural process. That was about the process and technique about the materials, over the years, I have identified that I come back to the same ones: soap, gold, air, and any liquids playing on their viscosity. Then as any performer I used my body to create. It was very transcendent and questioning when I was considering my body as a tool of creation. Faith helped me on this subject: first, to respect myself; secondly, to acknowledge the difference between when I create and my deep identity. I am an artist at my soul level, and this transcends gender. I am a woman too. This is important because then it changes everything. Let me explain. I need to recognize myself as a woman when I create, in order to keep and reach the depths of my sensitivity and those highest potentials opening to me while in creation. This uplifts me in my private life. My family does feel it. At the same time, my art is beyond any gender, as gender is not a subject of mine when I create. I create out of beauty and inspiration, never because I am a woman. Understanding this equals a shift in overview in any collector’s or museum’s work. It allows any party in the art world to access more layers of the work and therefore more richness through the recognition of new vastness to explore in the art field. Yes, definitely, to me the art world is one of the best places to be if you enjoy life, and the greatest part is that the ocean is my partner in creation.”
What does your art mean to you?
“My art is everything to me. It is my way to connect with people. When I create, my expression is always perfect. First, I respect my rhythm, whether biological or performance-based, so I am respected there. With my art, everything that I wanted to say, and which would have taken me years to say and caused me exhaustion, is there, in one picture that may have taken me an afternoon to create. Of course, there is still exhaustion in the process of creation, yet in art, this exhaustion feels like, and is, elevation. There is no depletion in art. Neither on the human level nor on the financial aspect of it. That may be one of the reasons why it is one of the sectors that continues to grow during times of crisis. Art has this ability to remain meaningful and to create connection even when everything around us is changing. I really do love art for this because people can connect on all levels thanks to it. They do feel the same elevation as they are trying to understand the art piece. If they don’t understand it or are not touched by it for now, they might need more time, more keys, or more life experience to get it. And this is the beauty of art: it always informs us of our mutual states and our understanding of the world at any time we look at it. I think this is one reason why my art is also my way to be and live in this world. If I had to say one thing, it is that with my art, I can reach levels of understanding that I would not reach, nor accept, on a daily basis without its existence. It is also my way to understand life on a metaphysical level and what is happening over time. So definitely, my art means everything to me and no AI can take this spot.”
What’s your favourite artwork and why?
“I always go for Klein and his blue. I find it so deep. There are no words to describe it. That’s genius in action. There is courage, there is an understanding of the era he lived in, and there is eternity as much as there is contemporaneity and temporal impact. And, of course, I do love blue. I still have an art piece in my mind that is waiting to be unveiled, related to an homage to this artist’s move. It will happen when I have time. All the monochromatic works I have been exposed to have impacted me deeply. Somehow, I think that as artists, when we reach this stage of color work, it is like touching the fundamentals for a few moments, thanks to the daily work we have been putting in. It is like Suprematist Composition: White on White (Супрематическая композиция — Белое на белом) by Kazimir Malevich, from 1918, which, to me, already anticipated the square format of today’s social media without knowing it. I think that if you want to know the future, you can go to art, no joke. I have come to acknowledge that I have created my own homage to those masters. In 2025, I created Carré blanc sur pixel RVB255. It didn’t come on purpose; the piece simply appeared to be there, in my hands, and so I made it happen. It transforms a fleeting Instagram moment into a timeless meditation on joy and purity. I was inspired by my curated Instagram profile and one of its plain-colour posts featuring the song ‘Do What Makes You Happy’ by Roxana. I used RGB255—the purest white of screen light—as both medium and metaphor. It really felt like inner peace after the creation. Some said: ‘A masterstroke for a masterpiece.’ so I kept it in the reference.”
Have you had any noteworthy exhibitions you'd like to share?
“My first exhibition as a professional artist was of course a significant one, as it took place in the building of Les Beaux-Arts in France in 2019. I was not present for the full day, yet when I was I had the opportunity to connect with the public, especially a family who admitted they had hesitated before coming and felt reassured to experience that with the proper information and welcoming atmosphere they understood my work. They left with a smile and their hearts filled with art. I loved it.”
Website: www.fierce.works
Instagram: @emmaclairefierce
Other links: www.linkedin.com/in/emmaclairefierce
