ANTWERP.- M HKA presents the first survey exhibition of French artist Pauline Curnier Jardin. The show brings together twenty years of her exuberant, hybrid art practice, featuring films, drawings, sculptures, installations, and a stage for live events. Visitors are immersed in Curnier Jardin’s unique world, where cinema, performance, and personal or collective stories merge into a festive and multi-layered whole.
Resistance and imagination in the work of Pauline Curnier Jardin
The Associations of Pauline Curnier Jardin is the first survey exhibition dedicated to Pauline Curnier Jardin’s (°1980, Marseille, France) artistic career, which emerged twenty years ago at the intersection of cinema, performance and the visual arts, in close connection with the places where she has lived and worked: the Netherlands, Germany, Italy and France.
The title announces a story: a story of the 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.
Two fundamental themes characterize the work of Pauline Curnier Jardin: the exploration of practices that offer a cultural outlet, such as carnivals, travelling cinemas, circuses, processions or living nativities, 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.
A living archive of twenty years of artistic practice
For the first time, an extensive collection of works from the period 2006–2024 is brought together, including more than twenty films, sculptural assemblages, a display of drawings and a selection of large-scale installations resembling stage sets that have contributed to Pauline Curnier Jardin’s renown.
Open stage
At the heart of the exhibition, the artist has installed a stage to host a lively programme conceived in resonance with her work: events organized by guest associations, performances, screenings, lectures and workshops.
Watch Pauline Curnier Jardin’s films at home
In partnership with the artist’s studio, M HKA has made all the films made by Pauline Curnier Jardin between 2006 and 2024 available to the public on an online platform designed especially for the exhibition. Free access until the end of February 2026.
https://paulinecurnierjardin.ensembles.org
Publication
The first monograph dedicated to Pauline Curnier Jardin’s work will be published in 2026. The book is a collaboration between the Palais de Tokyo (Paris), the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (Madrid) and Muhka (Antwerp).
Pauline Curnier Jardin (1980, Marseille, France) is an artist working across installation, performance, film, and drawing. Her outstanding cinematic installations create unorthodox universes and tell stories, thus proposing alternative narratives. She is the winner of the 2019 German Preis der Nationalgalerie, the 2021 Villa Romana Prize in Firenze, and recipient of the 2019-2020 Villa Medici fellowship in Rome.
Her work was included or commissioned over the last years in: Galeria Municipal do Porto, Porto (2025), Kiasma, Helsinki (2024), MACRO, Rome (2024), Centraal Museum, Utrecht (2023), Kunsthaus Pasquart, Bienne (2023), CRAC Occitanie, Sète (2022); FRAC Corsica (2022); Fondazione Memmo, Rome (2022); Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW), Berlin (2022); LIAF, Venice and Kabelvåg (2022); Hamburger Bahnhof-Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin (2021); INDEX – The Swedish Contemporary Art Foundation, Stockholm (2021); Steirischer Herbst Festival, Graz (2020); Manifesta 13, Marseille (2020); Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2020 and 2013); the Bergen Assembly, Bergen Biennial (2019); International Film Festival, Rotterdam (2018); the 57th Venice Biennale (2017); Tate Modern, London (2017); Performa 15, New York (2015).
