My practice revolves around questioning established systems and representations by exploring themes of shapelessness, disorder, and entropy. I use my intuition and visual analogy as tools to investigate the relationship between seemingly disparate entities, challenging traditional boundaries and hierarchical structures.

Through ecofeminist principles, I interrogate the power dynamics that govern our relationship with nature and gender. With my photographic works and installations, I aim to challenge the systems that have historically categorized and controlled women and the natural world. By embracing chaos and rejecting rigid taxonomies, I want to engage in a political act that questions the exploitation of both feminine-coded bodies and natural resources.

The feeling of letting go is central to my practice, representing a conscious abandonment of control and a challenge to the dominant paradigm that values order over chaos. My method of using visual analogy confronts man-made boundaries, reveals the hidden coherence across different categories of objects and questions dualistic thinking. Intuition is to me a legitimate epistemological tool that allows my practice to embrace diverse materials and reimagine the relationship with the world as deeply entangled with all matter.

Since 2016, I have developped a lens-based practice, creating large installations that often feature monumental photographs tailored to specific exhibition spaces. My experimental approach to photography involves creating fluid images that navigate between 2D and 3D, engaging with architectural elements and offering a sensorial experience for viewers.

claire paugam



Attempting the Embrace n°31   Reykjavik Art Museum   2021          
Photo by Hildur Inga Björnsdóttir



Claire Paugam works in layers, overlapping textures, and colours. Her supports are video, photography installation and performance. She also creates sculptures and small objects she uses as part of other works namely installations. She frequently uses her body and the bodies of other people as disruptive element or as constituent part of the landscape, with a thorough scenic component. The textures are used to unify body and nature, as a reflection over the universal, composing a kind of sensorial diaries of the landscape. Claire evokes this way the texture as a sensorial medium to remind us that we are all "cosmic dust" by composing an image with a rock and a piece of meat, like she did in Attempting the Embrace n°29 or n°25 and n°26, where we can barely distinguish between the meat and the rock.
Claire does not take life, does not isolate the Human flesh, she animates an inanimate object as if she has blown into it the breath of life. [...] In her practice we may see both the will to animate pieces and objects, and sometimes we may feel that the objects are the ones boosting the reification of the landscape, always raising questions about the matter, or what is or is not tangible to the look.

Excerpt from "Claire Paugam - Attempting the Embrace" by Barbara Valentina   Umbigo art and design magazine  
Portugal   2017