Deep Scarlet, Scream Ruby — The Freestanding Joys

In her first exhibition in Portugal, French artist Pauline Curnier Jardin evokes the image of a traveling circus arriving to town. Drawing inspiration from religious pageantry, folk rituals, and subcultural aesthetics to challenge traditional structures of power and desire, the project channels the anarchic energy of carnival — rituals of reversal, an embrace of excess, and the ability to destabilise social order.

Jauline Curnier Jardin (1980, Marseille, France) crafts fantastical universes that disrupt dominant understandings and invite us to imagine new possibilities. Working across installation, performance, film, and drawing, Pauline Curnier Jardin’s practice proposes immersive and embodied experiences nesting unorthodox and mythical stories, dissolving distinctions between spectator and participant or reality and delirium.

Photographs by Dinis Santos