Titled “Virages Vierges,” Pauline Curnier Jardin’s solo exhibition takes the notion of deviation—even deviance—as its starting point: the turn as a departure from the straight line, abandoning a stable path in favor of uncertainty and less-traveled routes. Like her fragmented narratives, the artist’s work takes shape in ambiguous spaces where fiction, ritual, and documentary intertwine without hierarchy.
The virgins evoke female bodies, laden with histories, expectations, and violence, caught in a constant tension between sacralization and stigmatization. Between the figures of the saint and the prostitute, these bodies—by turns idealized, controlled, or condemned—assert a desiring, transgressive power far removed from passivity or objectification. The term also evokes virgin territory: the unknown as a space for projection and reinvention. “Virages Vierges” thus refers to those turning points when bodies, narratives, beliefs, and constructs leave well-trodden paths behind to open up, irreverently and defiantly, other possible futures. This major solo exhibition allows Pauline Curnier Jardin to showcase the breadth of her practice through a selection of landmark works—notably video installations and sculptures—alongside new productions. Visitors will discover her phantasmagorical atmospheres, poised between theater, cinema, and ritual, exploring recurring themes: the fluidity between bodily vulnerability and power, the place of women in society, and popular forms of spirituality and syncretism. For a new video installation, the artist draws inspiration from an underground cinema discovered beneath the Trocadéro (next to the Palais de Tokyo) in 2004 and nicknamed “les arènes de Chaillot”—a place for inventing other forms of freedom. This site resonates deeply with her work, fueling her fascination with liminal spaces, dissident practices, and narratives that escape established norms. This project continues the longstanding relationship between the Palais de Tokyo and the artist, who previously took part in the group exhibitions “Dynasty” (2010, with the musée d’art moderne de Paris) and “Anticorps” (2020). This exhibition is produced in collaboration with the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (Madrid). In 2026, the Palais de Tokyo (Paris), the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (Madrid), and the M HKA (Anvers) will publish the first monograph devoted to the work of Pauline Curnier Jardin.
Admission: 0 to 13 euros.
Source: paris.fr — photo: Adagp, Paris, 2026