Leeum Museum Presents “A Portrait” by Pauline Boudry/Renate Lorenz

The Leeum Museum of Art presents “A Portrait” by Pauline Boudry/Renate Lorenz, a newly commissioned film installation for the lobby’s Media Wall, running from July 18 to November 24, 2024. This captivating film features eight choreographers, artists, and musicians, each performing a portrait against the backdrop of a giant black faux leather curtain.

The installation invites viewers to ponder the nature of performance and presence. Each performer experiments with their appearance before the camera, blurring the lines between performing feelings and personal feelings, gestures and movements. Drawing on queer underground performance traditions, these portraits challenge the distinction between performing and being, props and bodies. The resulting images are both glamorous and vulnerable, silent yet unapologetic, offering a glimpse into radical expressions of identity that resist easy categorization.

The film is displayed on an LED screen in the museum’s lobby, transforming the space into a conceptual stage. The majestic curtain, also a sculptural piece titled “Curtain Piece (Disobedient)” (2023), enhances this effect, inviting the audience into a space where different modes of being—observing, engaging, and even performing—intersect.

Pauline Boudry and Renate Lorenz, based in Berlin and established as a collaborative duo in 2007, create film installations rooted in performance and choreography. Their work navigates nonlinear temporalities and complex modes of performance, challenging normative narratives and conventions within historical and artistic contexts. They engage in long-term collaborations with performers, addressing themes such as the conditions of performance, the history of visibility, and the pathologization of bodies, while also celebrating companionship, glamour, and resistance.

Their solo exhibitions have been featured at prestigious venues including the Crystal Palace/Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid (2022), the Swiss Pavilion at the 58th Venice Biennale (2019), the Julia Stoschek Collection in Berlin (2019), and the Centre Culturel Suisse in Paris (2018). Their work has also been showcased at the 35th São Paulo Art Biennial, the 11th Seoul Mediacity Biennale, Whitechapel Gallery in London, the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, and the Centre Pompidou in Paris.