To the artist it seems that ever since she was a child there is a place where women could find a certain peace: in old age (if, in youth, one didn’t choose to be a nun). To be menopaused or virgin can be seen as a political gesture of removing oneself from the cycle of social reproduction, to not “feed the empire with a new generation of soldiers or a renewed tax base.“*’. Her solo show will be an apathetic, tragicomic mutiny of oldies.
Curnier Jardin relates to her 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. She has the tendency to create a universe that blurs and confuses the seemingly logical divisions between human and nonhuman, rationality and emotion, sacred and profane, ally and enemy, masculine and feminine, showing instead how each part of these equations are capable of interacting and combining, how each has alternatives, possibilities, and the freedom to do wonderful things. In her previous film works she has revisited the stories of Joan of Arc, Bernadette Soubirou and the Goddess Demeter, the birth of Jesus and his saint Family, the Anatomic Theatre of the Renaissance, the dark side of that same Renaissance; the spectres of world wars, and, the exploitation and destruction that haunt the European past and present. Her so-called baroque, grotesque and at times dark aesthetics mix influences from B-movies, folklore, dance, anarchy and epic poetry, catholic and pagan ritual, and the realness of streets and village parties. It draws inspiration from earlier experimental and contemporary filmmakers but also from the countless, nameless creators of popular culture and nature itself.
in »The World Inside Out » Ana Teixera Pinto on Pauline Curnier Jardin, for TEXTWork, Fondation Ricard pour l’Art Contemporain.
