Virages Vierges

Entitled “Virages Vierges”, Pauline Curnier Jardin’s solo exhibition takes the notion of deviation, even deviance, as its starting point: the turn as a departure from the straight line, an abandonment of a stable trajectory in favour of uncertainty and alternative paths. Like her fragmented narratives, the artist’s work is constructed in zones of disturbance where fiction, ritual and documentary intertwine without hierarchy.

The virgins refer to female bodies, saturated with histories, injunctions and violence, caught in a constant tension between sacralisation and stigmatisation.

Between the figures of the saint and the prostitute, these bodies, alternately idealised, controlled or condemned, assert a desiring and transgressive power, far from any passivity or objectification.

The term also evokes virgin territory: the unknown as a space for projection and reinvention.

“Virages Vierges” thus designates those tipping points where bodies, narratives, beliefs and constructions leave well-trodden paths to open up, irreverently and indocilely, other possible futures.

This major monographic exhibition allows Pauline Curnier Jardin to deploy her practice through a selection of significant works – notably video installations and sculptures – as well as new productions.

One discovers her phantasmagorical atmospheres, between theatre, cinema and ritual, serving recurring themes: the fluidity between vulnerability and power of bodies, the place of women in society, as well as forms of popular spirituality and syncretism.

For the creation of a new video installation, the artist draws inspiration from a clandestine cinema discovered in 2004 under the Trocadéro (neighbouring the Palais de Tokyo) and nicknamed “les arènes de Chaillot” – a place to invent other forms of freedom.

This site resonates deeply with her work, feeding her attraction to liminal spaces, dissident practices and narratives that escape established norms.

This project is part of the continuation of a long-standing relationship between the Palais de Tokyo and the artist, who previously participated in the collective exhibitions “Dynasty” (2010, with the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris) and “Anticorps” (2020).

This exhibition is realised in collaboration with the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (Madrid). The Palais de Tokyo (Paris)