Pauline Curnier Jardin

In 2019, the carnival in the Belgian city of Aalst was removed from UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage—at the request of the city itself—due to countless discriminatory tropes. The recent history of the street parade reflects the shift to the right among the working class in this traditional industrial town. One of the controversial characters is Vuil Jeanet (Dirty Jeanet), who—embodied by cross-dressing men—combines clichés of the sex worker, poor mother, and crazy wife. Pauline Curnier Jardin accompanied the carnival with a camera crew, throwing a critical and reflexive gaze at men who dress to hate.

Pauline Curnier Jardin (1980, Marseille, France) is an artist working mainly with film, installation, performance, and drawing. Curnier Jardin’s approach combines ethnography and fantasy, with a particular awareness of the roles of women in mythology, folklore, and conventional narrative cinema. Her works have recently been shown at Kiasma, Helsinki (2024); MACRO, Rome (2024); Centraal Museum, Utrecht (2023); Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (2022); and Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin (2021), among others. In 2019, she was awarded the Preis der Nationalgalerie. She lives in Rome and Berlin.