Virages Vierges - Pauline Curnier Jardin

Titled "Virages Vierges," Pauline Curnier Jardin’s solo exhibition takes as its point of departure the notion of deviation, even deviance: the turn as an exit from the straight line, the abandonment of a stable trajectory in favor of uncertainty and backroads. Like her fragmented narratives, the artist’s work is built in zones of disturbance where fiction, ritual and documentary intertwine without hierarchy. The exhibition opens at the Palais de Tokyo on April 3, 2026 at 10:00 a.m.

The "virgins" refer to female bodies, saturated with histories, injunctions and violences, caught in a constant tension between sacralization and stigmatization. Between the figures of the saint and the prostitute, these bodies—at times idealized, controlled or condemned—assert a desiring and transgressive power, far from any passivity or objectification. The term also evokes virgin territory: the unknown as a space for projection and reinvention. "Virages Vierges" thus names those moments of tipping point when bodies, narratives, beliefs and constructions leave the well-worn tracks to open, in an irreverent and unruly manner, other possible futures.

This solo exhibition enables Pauline Curnier Jardin to deploy her practice through a selection of major works—notably video installations and sculptures—as well as new productions. Visitors will discover her phantasmagoric atmospheres, situated between theatre, cinema and ritual, serving recurring themes: the fluidity between vulnerability and bodily power, the place of women in society, and forms of popular spirituality and syncretism.

For the creation of a new video installation, the artist draws inspiration from an illicit cinema discovered in 2004 beneath the Trocadéro (adjacent to the Palais de Tokyo) and nicknamed "the Chaillot arenas"—a place to invent other forms of freedom. This site resonates deeply with her work, nourishing her attraction to liminal spaces, dissident practices and narratives that escape established norms.