Pauline Boudry / Renete Lorenz: A Portrait

Leeum Museum of Art presents A Portrait by Pauline Boudry / Renate Lorenz, a new commission for the lobby’s Media Wall. The film features eight choreographers, artists, and musicians. Each enters the scene against the backdrop of a giant black faux leather curtain, arriving at a simple chair to perform a portrait. The artists experiment with ways of appearing in front of a camera. Do we see a person performing feelings, or do we see a performer's personal feelings? Do we see a person’s gestures or a performer’s movements? Mobilizing lessons from queer underground performances, the (in)visibilities of these portraits undermine the distinction between performing and being, and props and bodies. Glamorous and vulnerable, silent yet unapologetic, the individual portraits show a glimpse of a radical difference that resists description. 

Shown on an LED screen with an outstanding presence at the museum’s lobby, the majestic curtain—Curtain Piece (Disobedient) (2023)—not only is a background and a sculptural work from the video but also renders the lobby space into a temporary and conceptual stage. The film draws the audience into a precarious terrain where different modes of being—simply being present on site, engaging with the work, themselves becoming performers—coincide. 

Pauline Boudry / Renate Lorenz (established in 2007, based in Berlin) produces film installations based on performance and choreography. Navigating nonlinear temporalities and complex modes of performing, their practice challenges normative narratives and conventions in history and artistic legacies. They collaborate with performers of various fields, engaging in long-term conversations about the conditions of performance, the violent history of visibility, and the pathologization of bodies, but also about companionship, glamor, and resistance. They have held solo exhibitions/presentations in Crystal Palace/Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid (2022), the Swiss Pavilion of the 58th Biennale di Venezia (2019), Julia Stoschek Collection, Berlin (2019), and Centre Culturel Suisse, Paris (2018). Their work has been recently shown at the 35th São Paulo Art Biennal, the 11th Seoul Mediacity Biennale, Whitechapel Gallery London, the Hammer Museum Los Angeles, and Centre Pompidou Paris, among others.

Commissioned by Leeum Museum of Art. With the support of BAK, Bundesamt für Kultur Austria. Courtesy of Marcelle Alix, Paris, Ellen de Bruijne Projects, Amsterdam.

Curated by Jiwon Yu, Curator, Leeum Museum of Art

Press inquiries: Miso Han, Communication Team, Leeum Museum of Art. miso.han [​at​] samsung.com