Fat to Ashes
Preis der national Galerie, Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin, April-September 2021
Pauline Curnier Jardin, winner of the Preis der Nationalgalerie 2019, is presenting the extensive video installation Fat to Ashes. The exhibition centers on the filmic work Fat to Ashes, which combines three storylines: a religious festival in honor of St. Agatha, the slaughter of a pig, and the Carnival of Cologne.
The spectacle centers on the film inside an imposing, spacious arena right in the middle of the museum. Reminiscent of Rome’s Colosseum, the arena rises up to a great height like a set. Rather than being built of solid brickwork, the walls of the arena are porous. Seen from a distance the arena looks like a huge cake, with a facade made of marzipan.
The installation Feel Good is located in the columned arcade on the left side of the museum’s Historische Halle. Church loudspeakers, decorated with large candles that were blessed in Sicily, are mounted onto the columns and pour forth a soundtrack made up of cliking high heels and the swoosh of traffic. Together with drawings the artist commissioned sex workers to make that illustrate their life realities, they pay tribute to a group that has been ignored by the state and its politicians – not for the first time but during pandemic with a vengeance.
FEEL GOOD COOPERATIVE
TEXTS ABOUT THE WORK:
Breast is Best
Ana Teixteira Pinto
Excess and devotion. Rituals of masculinity in the films of Pauline Curnier Jardin
Giovanna Zapperi
Pauline Curnier Jardin, Fat to Ashes
Jacqui Davies
Artist: Pauline Curnier Jardin
Producer: Jacqui Davies
Artist assistant: Marie Flarup Kristensen
Curator: Kristina Schrei
Set Design: Christian Beck
Set design team: Richard Krause, Giulio Marco Olivero, Helena Rohde, Malene Tesch
Carpenter: Nikolas Friedrich, Joel Seele
Artistic production team: Quirin Bäumler, Ulrich Hakel
Intern: Pauline Millet.
Pauline Curnier Jardin, Fat to Ashes
HD video (transferred from 16mm – and super 8-film), colour , 5.1 surround sound, 20:55 min.
Arena-Installation, variuos media including steel scaffolding, wood panels, foam, fabric, straw.
Film team:
Producer: Jacqui Davies/PRIMITIVE FILM
Assistants: Marie Elena Agiudo, Beatrice Tomassetti
Editor: Benni Atria.
Sant’Agata:
Sound editor: Antonio Gianantonio
Images: Pauline Curnier Jardin, Mirai Pulvirenti
Sound: Valentina Vallorani.
Köln Karneval
Images: Imogen Heath, Pauline Curnier Jardin
Sound: Christof Shilling. The pig
Images: Pauline Curnier Jardin
Sound: Tobias Haberkorn
Postproduction: The Post Republic.
With support of Académie de France à Rome – Villa Medici, CRAC Sète, Institut Francais de Berlin.
Pauline Curnier Jardin & Feel Good Cooperative, Feel Good
Sound-installation, blessed candles, foam, ropes and works on paper, 10 minutes.
Drawings: Alexandra Lopez, Andrea, Alexandra Mapuchina, Gilda Star, Giuliana (made in Rome, June 2020)
Sound design: Antonio Gianantonio
Blessing: Candles blessed in Catania by Padre Don Domenico on the 4th of March 2021.
Fat to Ashes, Exhibition views Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart – Berlin, 2021,
© Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie / Mathias Völzke © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2021
