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 a Berlin-Rome based artist working across installation, performance, film and drawing.
Her work was included or commissioned over the last years in: Kiasma, Helsinki (2024), MACRO, Rome (2024), Centraal Museum, Utrecht (2023), Kunsthaus Pasquart, Bienne (2023), CRAC Occitanie, Sète (2022); FRAC Corsica (2022); Fondazione Memmo, Rome (2022); Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW), Berlin (2022); LIAF, Venice and Kabelvåg (2022); Hamburger Bahnhof-Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin (2021); INDEX – The Swedish Contemporary Art Foundation, Stockholm (2021); Steirischer Herbst Festival, Graz (2020); Manifesta 13, Marseille (2020); Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2020 and 2013); the Bergen Assembly, Bergen Biennial (2019); International Film Festival, Rotterdam (2018); the 57th Venice Biennale (2017); Tate Modern, London (2017); Performa 15, New York (2015).
Curnier Jardin 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. She was the winner of the Dutch prize NN Award (2018) and laureate of the Prix Fondation d’Entreprise Ricard (2017).
She is lecturer in the MA Fine Arts at ZHdK in Zurich since 2024 and tutor at De Ateliers in Amsterdam since 2020
Pauline Curnier Jardin is founding member of the Feel Good Cooperative.
CV
Collaborators & Friends
Rio Terà dei Pensieri / Feel Good Cooperative / Primitive Film / Benni Atria / Antonio Giannantonio / Colin Ledoux / Christian Beck / Ana Teixeira Pinto / Giovanna Zapperi / Imogen Heath / Josefin Arnell / Nadira Husain / AMARD BIRDS / ERIAC / Rachel Garcia / Midget! / Margaux Parillaud / Tobias Haberkorn / Anna Reutinger / Eliot Dubois / Les Vraoums / Maja Nilsen / Constantin Alexandrakis / Karina Bisch / Das Dingbât / Hélène Delprat / Lucile Desamory / Grand Magasin / Nina Lassila / Marie Losier / Viviana Moin / Marie Proyart / Catriona Shaw / Sarah Tritz / Vision Forum / Art 21 / verse
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