The Resurrection Plot

With her Resurrection Plot Pauline Curnier Jardin takes the audience on an idiosyncratic journey through the Renaissance nodding toward the period’s emphasis on renewal, revival, and regeneration.

Via a series of singing tableaux vivants drawn from a wealth of historic and anachronistic sources as diverse as witchcraft, voguing, and the animal kingdom, the artist plays across sixteenth century pageantries. The performance pays tribute to Renaissance "misfits" among them painter Giuseppe Arcimboldo, ceramicist Bernard Palissy, and writer François Rabelais, all known for the overgrown and carnivalesque saturation of natural elements in their work. With her way of juxtaposing incongruous elements - where regenerative animals such as lizards and cicadas meet allegories of planets - Curnier Jardin creates an eccentric "Gesamtkunstwerk" that reconsiders the Renaissance from a subversive perspective challenging the figure of the "Renaissance Man" and its conquering hubris.

Produced by Performa in association with Lafayette Anticipation - Fondation d’entreprise Galeries Lafayette, Paris.
Co-presented with Pioneer Works.
Supported by PSM gallery, Berlin, Amy and Ronald Guttman, the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam, Institut Français à Paris, and the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the U.S.