Galerie Miranda is presenting a comprehensive solo exhibition featuring the work of French-American artist Nancy Wilson-Pajic (born 1941), titled "Object, shadow, text." The exhibition draws from the artist's personal archives to highlight early and lesser-known pieces, demonstrating the remarkable diversity of research and creative processes she has explored throughout her international career spanning more than five decades.
For over fifty years, Wilson-Pajic has dedicated her artistic practice to exploring the fundamental functions of photography as a medium, while simultaneously examining the role of art and artists in contemporary society. The current exhibition at Galerie Miranda specifically focuses on overlooked early works that showcase the breadth of her investigations and the innovative techniques she has experimented with throughout her career. The selection traces her artistic evolution from her groundbreaking feminist expressions of the 1970s to her pioneering explorations of traditional photographic processes during the 1980s and 1990s.
Wilson-Pajic initially turned to photography as a documentation tool for her performances, ephemeral installations, and site-specific interventions. Beginning in the 1980s, she shifted her focus to questioning how photographic images command our attention and what transforms a photograph into a work of art. This inquiry led her to experiment extensively with alternative printing processes and unconventional materials, including Xerox copies, plastic, paper, and paint.
The artist's most significant breakthrough came through her extensive exploration of the photogram, which she approached as a form of trace-making through the unique relationship it establishes between objects and their imprints, captured through the shadows they leave behind. This research resulted in a major body of poetic work featuring large cyanotypes of disembodied textiles, including haute couture dresses from renowned designers Christian Dior, Alexander McQueen, and Christian Lacroix, as well as antique lace, theatrical costumes, and everyday objects.
The exhibition brings together several of Wilson-Pajic's most emblematic conceptual series. Among the featured works is "Perfect Shade of Gray" (1978-1979), consisting of eight pieces that combine photography and painting in an anti-aesthetic project that embodies her early questioning of authorial position and photography's representative function. Also on display is "Drifter" (1983-1987), a collection of large-format gum-bichromate prints that merge text and image, created from photographs taken with a basic camera while traveling by car on the highways of suburban Paris.
The exhibition also showcases large-format cyanotype photograms from two significant series: "Falling Angels" (1995-1997) and "Les Divas" (2004), along with several unique self-portraits from the 1970s. The exhibition's subtitle "shadow" references the experimental camera-less photography movement of the 1920s, particularly the work of Christian Schad (1894-1982), whose technique was described by Tristan Tzara as "schadographes" - small compositions made from torn paper, newspaper, and fabric arranged on photographic paper, pressed under glass, and exposed to light on balconies to capture "traces of small debris of everyday life."
"Nancy Wilson-Pajic: Object, shadow, text" will run until January 3, 2026, at Galerie Miranda, located at 21 rue du Château d'Eau in Paris's 10th arrondissement. The gallery is open Wednesday through Saturday from 2:00 PM to 7:00 PM, or by appointment. Visitors can contact the gallery at +33 1 40 38 36 53 or via mobile at +33 663 08 6634, or visit www.galeriemiranda.com for more information.
