Pauline Curnier Jardin‘s (b. 1980, FR) work draws on visual art, film and performance, weaving them together into unified environments. She starts by researching a certain topic, which she then turns into stories overflowing with symbolism and allegory. The resulting installations often comprise a varied cast of artworks, decoration, non-functional objects, animals, monsters and women. Though she uses a vast variety of media to create her settings—drawings, photos, film, songs, performance—cinema and theatre remain at their heart. 

Pauline Curnier Jardin, Qu’un Sang Impur, 2019
HD video
16:05 min
With: Bridge Markland, Eva Maria Kurz, Helga Seebacher, Medusa
Gühne, Rita Stausberg, Nina Rueter, Laura Merrit & Maxi Awel, Stefanie
Heinrich, Mario Stahn, Valentin Braun, Braulio Bandeira, Nelly, Vampirina, Volkmar Günther.
First Assistant: Paula Alamillo Rodriguez
Image : Imogen Heath
Editing: Angela Anderson and Judy Landkammer
Sound: Toni V Monge
Costumes & Props: Anna Reutinger, Carmen Roca, Pauline Curnier Jardin
Producer: Paula Alamillo Rodriguez & Sonja Klümper / AMARD BIRD FilmsCo-produced by Freunde der Nationalgalerie / Nationalgalerie – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Bergen Assembly and If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution
Courtesy of the artist and Ellen de Bruijne Projects

Qu’un Sang Impur (video, 2019) began as a loose remake of Jean Genet’s only realised film Un Chant d’Amour [Song of Love, 1950], a homoerotic love story about prison inmates that transpires under the yearning gaze of a sadistic guard. In Curnier Jardin’s film, the young male bodies are replaced with postmenopausal women. Having escaped the endless reproductive loop, they are now ‘off the market’ as Virginie Despentes would say. This liberation enables them to celebrate a newfound erotic power. Here, the artist ascribes a special power to this stage in a woman’s life, uncoupled from being an object of desire.