Clémence Farrell to Present Keynote at PQ’s April Symposium
Scenographer, exhibition architect, and designer Clémence Farrell will present the keynote lecture at the Prague Quadrennial’s international symposium Performing Exhibitions, Curating Scenographies on Monday, 13 April. The symposium will take place at ARCHA+ Theatre and run until Wednesday, 15 April. The program will feature more than 60 speakers from around the world, addressing the interconnections between contemporary scenography, curating, and exhibiting. Admission is free upon accrediting at www.pq.cz.
(Clémence Farrell, photo: Sy Thierno)
Clémence Farrell, scenographer, designer, and exhibition architect working in France and internationally, will present in Czechia for the first time. After studying at École nationale supérieure des arts décoratifs (ENSAD Paris), she worked as a set designer in film and television production. In 2008, she founded her own studio specializing in exhibition architecture, scenography, and the design of interactive elements and multimedia solutions for museum and gallery displays as well as cultural events.
Clémence Farrell has contributed to more than 70 exhibition projects; including the architectural concept for the recently concluded 36th São Paulo Art Biennial, or the scenography of the Biennale of Contemporary African Art in Dakar (2024). Her work has been presented, among other venues, at Louvre Abu Dhabi, Paris’s Grand Palais, Mémorial de la Shoah, Versailles Palace, Oceanographic Museum of Monaco, Paris Philharmonie, Institut du monde arabe, and the SOMETHING gallery in Abidjan. In 2016, she received the European Educational Program Award for the exhibition Natur Detektive, created for the Stuttgart Natural History Museum.
(Cléopâtre, 2025, Institut du monde arabe,
photo: Benoît Drouet, Cindy Levy)
How to Present Scenography?
“PQ is a place where the exhibition format—rooted in the event’s origins in a fine arts biennial—intersects with live theatre and performance. This tension between an exhibition and a performative, festival-like event makes us acutely aware of how closely theatre and scenography relate to curating and exhibiting, and vice versa. At the symposium, which will bring together curators from many countries and regions participating in PQ 2027, we want to focus on fundamental questions that have been connected with PQ from the beginning and remain urgent today: how can we mediate scenography as an art form—an inseparable component of performance—outside its original context? How can we make it present and reflect it within a ten-day international event such as PQ?,” explains Barbora Příhodová, Artistic Director of PQ, adding: “This challenge has many layers: from selecting the projects and framing them thematically, through scenographic solutions that place material in spatial and visual contexts and create atmosphere of an exhibit or installation, to the ways in which audiences are guided through the work and drawn into its subject. Working with audiences, creating experience and shared encounter, is key today and fundamentally transforms curating, exhibition practice, and scenography itself.”
Audience engagement in exhibition space and modes of immersion will also be addressed by Clémence Farrell in her lecture, a topic she has explored over many years in her scenographic and exhibition practice.
The rest of the program—debates featuring more than 60 speakers from around the world, including both theorists and practitioners—will be structured into five thematic panels and seven flash talk series. Presentations and discussions will address silence as a curatorial condition, working with “living” archives, and new approaches to exhibiting scenographic heritage and national representation in the context of PQ. Further topics include digital technologies, multisensory and embodied exhibition practices, and perspectives that move beyond the human.
Attendance, Accreditation, and Complete Program
Attendance is free of charge. Accreditations are now available at www.pq.cz. The full program, including presentation abstracts and speaker profiles, will be published in March.
The symposium will also include a discussion with the curatorial team of PQ 2027 and other activities dedicated to the organizational preparations for the upcoming 16th edition of Prague Quadrennial, intended especially for curators from participating countries and regions. As part of the symposium’s accompanying program, on Monday evening, scenographer, performer, and PQ Performance curator Pedro Gramegna Ardiles will present the performance Flesh, Face and Fire.
The symposium program is prepared by the PQ Talks curatorial team: Rachel Hann, Renato Bolelli Rebouças, and Barbora Příhodová, who also serves as PQ’s Artistic Director.
The symposium Performing Exhibitions, Curating Scenographies is supported by the Prague City Hall (City of Prague).
