Pauline Boudry

Pauline Boudry is a Swiss visual artist renowned for her collaborative film and installation works, created primarily with partner Renate Lorenz. Their practice interrogates queer theory, temporality, and the politics of visibility, often restaging historical performances or archival fragments. Boudry's work, frequently presented in an exhibition context that blurs the line between cinema and installation art, has been shown internationally at major institutions and biennials. She lives and works in Berlin.

Biography

Pauline Boudry was born in 1972 in Lausanne, Switzerland. She studied at the École cantonale d'art de Lausanne (ECAL), where she developed a foundation in visual arts. In the early 2000s, she moved to Berlin, a city known for its vibrant contemporary art scene, which became her permanent base. Her longstanding artistic partnership with Renate Lorenz, a professor of queer theory and art history, began in 2007, forming the core of her professional practice. This collaboration merges Boudry's cinematic and sculptural sensibilities with Lorenz's theoretical research, producing a distinctive body of work that has garnered significant international attention. Their collaborative projects are often developed and presented through residencies and productions across Europe and the United States.

Artistic practice

Boudry's artistic practice, developed with Renate Lorenz, centers on filmed performances and multi-channel installations that critically engage with history and normativity. Their method involves "reanimating" under-recognized or suppressed moments from the archives of queer and transgender history, feminist movements, and political resistance. They frequently collaborate with contemporary performers, such as Werner Hirsch, M. Lamar, and Julie Cunningham, to re-enact these gestures in meticulously constructed studio sets. The resulting films are presented as spatial installations, incorporating props, curtains, mirrors, and architectural interventions that transform the white cube of the gallery into a stage, challenging passive viewership. This approach questions linear narratives of progress and explores what they term "queer temporalities."

Selected works and exhibitions

Notable collaborative works by Boudry and Lorenz include *"Toxic Play in Two Acts"* (2012), *"Opaque"* (2014), *"I Want"* (2015), and *"Normal Work"* (2017). Their film *"Moving Backwards"* (2019) was featured in the Swiss Pavilion at the 58th Venice Biennale. Major solo exhibitions of their work have been held at institutions like the Kunsthalle Zürich, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, and the Kunstmuseum Bern. Their work has also been included in significant group exhibitions at the Tate Modern, the Walker Art Center, the Gwangju Biennale, and the Berlin Biennale. In 2023, they presented a major survey, *"Portrait of an Eye,"* at the Kunstmuseum Luzern.

Themes and critical reception

The central themes in Boudry's work involve the critique of normativity, the exploration of drag and masquerade, and the politics of the body under systems of capitalism and colonialism. Their practice is deeply informed by the writings of José Esteban Muñoz, Jack Halberstam, and Susan Stryker, using art to imagine fugitive spaces and alternative forms of sociality. Critical reception often highlights the works' lush, seductive visuality, which contrasts with and amplifies their rigorous conceptual critique of power structures. Art historians and critics, such as Mathias Danbolt and Jill H. Casid, have analyzed their contribution to expanding the discourse on queer art and the legibility of historical resistance in the present.

Awards and recognition

Boudry, in collaboration with Renate Lorenz, has received several prestigious awards and grants. These include the Swiss Art Award (Bundesamt für Kultur), the Prix Meret Oppenheim (the Swiss Grand Award for Art), and a fellowship from the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Europe. Their work is held in numerous public and private collections, including those of the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Kunstmuseum Basel, and the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City. Their participation in the Venice Biennale represents a significant point of recognition within the international contemporary art landscape.

Category:Swiss contemporary artists Category:Swiss women artists Category:Artists from Lausanne Category:21st-century Swiss women