Pauline Curnier Jardin: Hot Flowers, Warm Fingers

Step into the world of contemporary artist Pauline Curnier Jardin who challenges conventional norms and questions the stereotype of women with her unique blend of performance art, film, sculpture and installations.

About Pauline Curnier Jardin
Pauline Curnier Jardin is a contemporary artist who combines film, sculpture, installations and performance art to create visually overwhelming and thought-provoking art. A lot of her work depicts the role of women in mythology, history, folklore and cinema. Roles that were traditionally portrayed in a very stereotypical way; as saint, mother, witch or mystical creature. Through her work, she stands up for these women, and those who identify as women, who struggle with various forms of exclusion as well as structural and systemic violence. Her layered and often humorous installations allow for reflection on the complexity of gender and the representation of the female figure in our society.

About the exhibition
Hot Flowers, Warm Fingers is the first major solo exhibition of Curnier Jardin (Marseille, 1980) in the Netherlands. In this exhibition, the French artist presents works created in the past five years, in combination with new installations created specifically for this exhibition. Through her work, Pauline Curnier Jardin creates fictional worlds and invites us to plunge into alternative universes. The exhibition features five large installations that each take over an entire room. Each room examines a different aspect of stereotypical representations.

One example is the video work Qu’un Sang Impur (2019). The work is inspired by the homo-erotic cult film Un Chant d’Amour (1950) by Jean Genet. Curnier Jardin replaced the male actors by a group of menopausal women. The artist plays with the cliché of the older body that no longer conforms to the imposed ideals of beauty. Specifically for this exhibition and this work, Curnier Jardin created the theatre set Hot Flower Forest (2023), consisting of a garter belt, a thong, roses, and plant boxes containing hydrangeas. It combines the aesthetics of Valentine’s Day with a neat front yard.

Adoration
Her recent film Adoration (2022), co-commissioned by Centraal Museum and the Lofoten International Art Festival, takes us once again to meet a group of women inside a prison. The film was made in collaboration with a group of inmates of Casa di Reclusione Femminile, a Venetian women’s prison. Through the drawings of the inmates, with a collage style, the film tells the forgotten story of the walls of the prison, which in the past housed another total institution: a convent. In the sixteenth century, sex workers and other women who did not adhere to social norms were forced to enter the convent. Every year they would perform plays for the Venetian elite, which was their opportunity to show themselves. Adoration premiered during the Venice Biennale last year, and is now presented in the Netherlands for the first time.

Another Story
On the second floor, Centraal Museum launched “Another Story,” where artists are invited to present their own work in relation to the collection of the museum. Pauline Curnier Jardin is the first to take residence here. For Hot Flowers, Warm Fingers, she selected paintings and furniture pieces from Centraal Museum’s collection, such as Aangekomene (1933) by J.H. Moesman and Heilige Sebastiaan (ca. 1623). The art works are surrounded by Peaux de dame (Lady skins) (2018): soft, flat women made of imitation leather. Swimming on the walls of the room, the 'Lady Skins' peek at the works selected by Curnier Jardin and hint at the choice of presenting four different representations of Saint Sebastian: three paintings and a film; two classical representations, a surrealist figuration and a contemporary reinterpretation by the artist herself. The Lady Skins look at the skin of the Saint Sebastians, their choral gaze reverses and mimics the 'male gaze'.