« Comic troopers, bearded women, tamers of the jumping bean: when interrogated about how I come to do art and what my artistic motivation is, my mind wanders to the fair and the carnival, to a freak show of characters, a gallery of species, substances and stories. I relate to my practice through personas, through the embodiment and animation of concepts and feelings, through the Rabelaisian spectacle that lets myths come to life and facts melt to forms. The grotesque and the primitive that is encapsulated in every motion of our life is always ready to explode. I am a thwarted anthropologist, a wanna-be witch, a profane devotee, a poet and a butcher. Crust of humus, magma of pigment, puddle of mind. A cheeky satyr’s face sits upon the body of the whitest whale. »
Pauline Curnier Jardin (b. 1980, Marseille, France) is an Berlin-Rome based artist working across installation, performance, film and drawing.
Selected solo and group exhibitions, commissioned projects and screenings include: 57th Venice Biennale, IT; Tate Modern, London (2017), UK; Cobra Museum of Modern Art, Amsterdam, NL; International Film Festival, Rotterdam, NL; Video Art At Midnight; Berlin, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, DE; Futura, Prague, CZ; Ellen de Bruijne Projects, Amsterdam, NL (2018). Performa 15, New York, US; The Fondation Cartier pour l’Art Contemporain, Paris, FR; Migros Museum of Contemporary Art, Zurich, CH; University of São Paulo, São Paulo, BR (2015). MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, US (2014). Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, DE; Palais de Tokyo, Paris, FR (2013). Centre George Pompidou, Paris, FR (2012). Musée d’Art Moderne, Paris, FR; ZKM Museum of Contemporary Art, Karlsruhe, DE (2010).
Curnier Jardin completed a residency at the Rijksakademie Van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam in 2015-2016. She was the winner of the Dutch prize NN Award (2018) and laureate of the Prix Fondation d’Entreprise Ricard (2017). She was a visiting tutor at the Dutch Art Institute and at Kunsthochschule Kassel and has been tutor at De Ateliers in Amsterdam for the past year. She is the winner of the 2019 Preis der Nationalgalerie and recipient of the 2019/2020 Villa Medici Residency in Rome and the 2021 Villa Romana Fellows in Florence.