11/05/19 - 24/11/19 | Pauline Boudry / Renate Lorenz | Venice Biennial, Venice, IT

Ellen de Bruijne Projects and Marcelle Alix are proud to announce Pauline Boudry / Renate Lorenz in the Swiss Pavilion at the Venice Biennial 2019.

Curator Charlotte Laubard, who is responsible for the Swiss Pavilion at the Biennale Arte 2019, has invited artists Pauline Boudry / Renate Lorenz to present an installation, which includes a new video work. Entitled «Moving Backwards», the exhibition reflects on the current political situation, characterised by its regressive and reactionary forces of closure towards the other and towards difference. Faced with the scale of this recent backlash, the artists, instead of practicing an outright opposition, suggest «backward movements» as a potential tool for producing alternative forms of resistance and action.

As Charlotte Laubard observes: «Pauline Boudry / Renate Lorenz conceive their installations as devices that lead us to renegotiate our representations. Their work produces a double inversion: it introduces gestures, images and objects that refer to current political and social issues. At the same time, it grants these elements a high degree of autonomy so that they can interact with the public and establish interrelations that challenge our modes of perception and identification. »

For the Biennale Arte 2019, the artists will develop a large film installation involving performers Julie Cunningham, Werner Hirsch, Latifa Laâbissi, Marbles Jumbo Radio and Nach who will experiment with backward movements. Invited to enter a dense choreography generated by body movements, film loops and animated objects, visitors will participate in strange encounters, in an environment reminiscent of a nightclub. Their physical and sensory experience will be complemented by moments of reflection on the Pavilion’s theme in the form of a free journal containing statements written by a dozen authors from the fields of philosophy, art, political activism, post-colonial and queer theories.

With the support of:
OUTSET GERMANY_SWITZERLAND, Antonie et Philippe Bertherat, Stanley Thomas Johnson Stiftung, Service des affaires culturelles – Canton de Vaud, Stiftung Erna und Curt Burgauer, Dr. Georg und Josi Guggenheim-Stiftung, Stiftung Temperatio.

Co-produced by:
Ville de Genève, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, HEAD – Genève, Fluxum Foundation, Arsenic – Centre d’art scénique contemporain, Lausanne.