ANTWERP.- The Associations of Pauline Curnier Jardin is the first survey exhibition dedicated to Pauline Curnier Jardin’s artistic career, which emerged twenty years ago at the intersection of cinema, performance and the visual arts.
The title announces a story: a story of groups formed throughout the artist’s career, of the affinities she has forged over time, and the feminist, civic, and creative commitments that have shaped her practice.
The exhibition unfolds as a gathering, a reunion of people and characters, rituals and places, associating to form a hybrid practice driven by a constant search for freedom, transformation and emancipation.
For the first time, an extensive collection of works from the period 2006-2024 has been brought together, including more than twenty films directed by the artist. These give a clear idea of the range of cinematic styles and genres that she explores: from documentaries to films in theatrical settings, filmed performances to tableaux vivants, tales to experimental fiction. The exhibition also includes sculptural assemblages, a series of drawings and a selection of large-scale installations resembling stage sets that have contributed to Pauline Curnier Jardin’s renown.
At the heart of the exhibition, the artist has installed a stage to host a lively programme conceived in resonance with her work: panel discussions with guest associations, performances, screenings, lectures and workshops.
Pauline Curnier Jardin’s work plunges deep into the cultural history of our regions. It bears witness to a profound fascination with stories, their structure and the ways in which they are shaped by state, church or patriarchal policies, but also (and especially) by alternative narrative systems that arise from the invisible areas of our societies.
Firmly anchored in reality, yet distorting it to magnify its beauty and contradictions, Pauline Curnier Jardin’s oeuvre positions Europe as a central protagonist — at once setting, silent witness, and co-author. Europe appears through its suburbs — French, Italian, German — its cities — Rome, Berlin, Noisy-le-Sec – its beliefs, vernacular practices, traumas, and festivities.
Two fundamental themes structure her work: the exploration of practices that offer a cultural outlet, such as carnival, travelling cinema, circus, procession or living nativity, and a practice of gathering — in a collective, family, community, association or troupe — that we might see as an essential and privileged tool of her life as a woman and an artist.
From measure to excess, Pauline Curnier Jardin’s films, drawings, performances and installations reveal spaces of truth where personal and official histories lose their hierarchical relationship. As genuinely cathartic celebrations, her works forge bonds, revealing the shared space between countercultures and loci of power, encouraging us to imagine new possibilities.
The exhibition is curated by Anne-Claire Schmitz, senior curator, M HKA.
Pauline Curnier Jardin (°1980 in Marseille, France) is an artist, filmmaker and performer. She received the Preis der Nationalgalerie in Germany in 2019, the Villa Romana Prize in Florence in 2021, and a Villa Medici grant in Rome for the year 2019–2020. She was in residence at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam from 2015 to 2017. Her individual practice has always been marked by collaborations and collective pr ojects, including Les Vraoums (2006–2016) and the Feel Good Coopera¬tive (2020–ongoing). In recent years, many centres dedicated to the visual arts, cinema and performance have devoted individual exhibitions to her work: the Galeria Municipal do Porto (2025), Kiasma in Helsinki (2024), MACRO in Rome (2024), the Centraal Mu¬seum in Utrecht (2023), Kunsthaus Pasquart in Biel/Bienne (2023), CRAC Occitanie in Sète (2022), FRAC Corsica in Corte (2022), the Fondazione Memmo in Rome (2022), the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) in Berlin (2022), LIAF in Venice and Kabelvåg, (2022), Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegen¬wart in Berlin (2021) and INDEX The Swedish Contemporary Art Foundation in Stockholm (2021). She has also participated in biennales and festivals around the world, including the Steirischer Herbst Festival (Graz, 2025 and 2020), Manifesta 13 (Marseille, 2020), the Bergen Assembly (2019), the International Film Festival Rotterdam (2018), the 57th Venice Biennale (2017) and Performa 15 (New York, 2015). Pauline Curnier Jardin currently teaches in the master’s programme at Zurich University of the Arts.
