2023 - Catalogue of Jólasýningin 2023, Ásmundarsalur Art Space
2023 - Catalogue of Skúlptúr/Skúlptúr, Gerðarsafn Art Museum
2022 - Ásmundarsalur art space “Artist talk - Essentially Untitled”
video by Helga Jóakimsdóttir
2021 - The Reykjavik Art Museum “Claire Paugam: Attempting the Embrace nr. 31”
2020 - Podcast Out There episode 2 “In the studio with Claire Paugam”, Icelandic Art Center
2020 - Icelandic Art Prize catalogue
Exxistenz Skynlisasafnið Reykjavik 2019
Curated by Johanne Christensen and Serena Swanson
Claire Paugam (born 1991) is a French artist based in Reykjavik. She works accross a variety of medium including photography, sculpture, and video. She creates large-scale installations that encourage the viewer to consider their place within the ever-shifting realms of the earth. Paugam’s blown-up imagery stretches the proportions of geological and bodily details. Her work explores biological processes and questions social norms.
SHAPELESS: LACKING A DEFINITE SHAPE, 2015
In her first time exhibiting one of her poems as a standalone work, Paugam challenges collectively learned reactions to saliva. In using spit, and the act of spitting, as a metaphor, we see the earth through the lens of our own bodily excretion. The spit features within different scenarios, taking us on a journey through the deconstruction of the cosmos.
Johanne Christensen
+ ou - sexe B+ Galerie Lyon France 2018
Curated by Gilles Maignaud
A travers ses photographies de la série “Slackly Fluids” et ses céramiques, Claire Paugam affirme une approche beaucoup plus viscérale. Son érotisme s’exprime dans le fait qu’elle focalise son présent travail sur les orifices du corps, orifices qui constituent les voies de communication matérielle entre un intérieur et des extérieurs. Les « trous » du corps, d’où naissent les désirs et passent leurs accomplissements, sont aussi sources de mystère et objets d’interdits.
Claire présente également la vidéo « self sex » co-réalisée avec Katerina Blahutova sur une pièce musicale de la musicienne Msea, où les contorsions rythmiques du corps féminin sont accentuées par l’immobilité minérale du paysage islandais.
Gilles Maignaud
Líkamleiki Icelandic Photography Festival Gerðarsafn Kópavogur Art Museum Iceland
Curated by Brynja Sveinsdóttir
In Claire Paugam’s series Attempting the Embrace the body and rock become one. A texture of raw flesh is reflected in stones and rock, and the body and landscape coalesce into one. Openings and grottos in rock are reflected in bodily orifices and forms; the amorphousness and textures of nature are reflected in the human body and organs. Her works are in the form of photographs, sculpture, video and drawings, bringing together the similarities, relationships and fusion of humanity and nature accross all media. The nature of photography is subverted by sculptures that jump out the frame, and sculptures are the subject of a video in which body parts are flung out into nature and left behind to be absorbed into their surroundings.
Brynja Sveinsdóttir, curator
all publications
2023 - Catalogue of Jólasýningin 2023, Ásmundarsalur Art Space
2023 - Catalogue of Skúlptúr/Skúlptúr, Gerðarsafn Art Museum
2022 - Ásmundarsalur art space “Artist talk - Essentially Untitled”, video
2021 - ”What about playfulness?” article published in Art in Iceland magazine #1
2020 - Podcast Out There, episode 2 “In the studio with Claire Paugam”, created and produced by the Icelandic Art Center
2020 - Poem and video piece published in the 4th issue of Ós Journal literary magazine, Ós Pressan, Reykjavík
2020 - Catalogue of the Icelandic Art Prize 2020
2018 - Exhibition catalogue 16e Biennnale d'Arts Actuels CRAC of Champigny-sur-Marne, France
2018 - Poem published in Murder Magazine vol II "Erotic/ System", Reykjavik - Los Angeles
2018 - Exhibition booktlet Líkamleiki, Icelandic Photography Festival, Gerðarsafn Kópavogur Art Museum
2017 - Exhibition catalogue Salon Parcours d'Artistes 2017, Les Passerelles, Pontault-Combault, France
2017 - Guest editor for the first issue THE ICEVIEW art and literature magazine, Iceland
2016 - Third issue "Surprise Edition" of Pseudoscienza art magazine, Vienna, Austria
2016 - Exhibition catalogue, Deep inside, 5th International Biennale for Young Art
2016 - Exhibition catalogue, Fine Art/Design Degree Show MA 2016, published by the Iceland Academy of the Arts
2016 - L'Enseignement de San Francisco by Colin Thil, published by Martian's Parlor Entertainment