Artists: Panteha Abareshi, Sahara Azzeg, Criptonite, Benoît Pieron, Sabrina Röthlisberger Belkacem, Camille Cornu, Olga Madjinodji, Flor Méchain, Sam Musy
Exhibition title: Sweet Crip
Venue: KRONE COURONNE, Biel/Bienne, Switzerland
Date: November 10 – December 10, 2023
Photography: ©Alizée Quinche/ all images copyright and courtesy of the artists and KRONE COURONNE, Biel/Bienne
Note: Exhibition’s booklet is available here
Panteha Abareshi, Sahara Azzeg, Criptonite, Benoît Piéron, Sabrina Röthlisberger Belkacem
With the participation of Camille Cornu, Flor Méchain & Sam Musy, Olga Madjinodji
Here we come, for a month, without codes, appearances or expected performances.
Here we sleep, share our stories, our poetry, our operas or our silences. We knit, we draw, we drink herbal tea and water, we sleep again, we touch and play with materials and objects, we stare into space or into the reflections of lights, and we eat sweets to make the pills go down.
When we name our conditions and our diagnoses, we realise that both in the public and in the professional spheres, we are asked to be gentle and discreet, not to show ourselves too much, except for when we are useful to their image and consciousness. We are asked not to put our exhaustion on display and not to awaken the beautiful nightmares of those with ‘good’ health.
The troubles we are attributed with trouble others.
If the contemporary art world makes these conditions taboo or relegates them to the so-called Art Brut or hobby art, it’s because it’s built around a class elitism that is validist* and discriminatory. If art spaces suffer from a persistent abulia* when it comes to adaptation, it’s because they lack the capacity for it. And while some institutions – in Biel, Switzerland or and internationally – question our abilities as a result of our diagnosis, others use us for their quotas.
Sweet Crip is not a freak show. It has no spectacular or miserabilist aim, nor does it objectify artists.
Naming Crip* is a reminder that people exist outside the validist and ableist* norm and that they can appropriate their stigma. It’s a reminder that, whether we are said to be able-bodied or not, we have primary needs and states that are neither frozen nor always effective.
Panteha Abareshi, Sahara Azzeg, Criptonite, Benoît Piéron, Sabrina Röthlisberger-Belkacem surround the exhibition with themselves and their pieces. Camille Cornu, Olga Madjinodji, Flor Méchain and Sam Musy will be reading, talking, and drawing on rainy Sundays. Others, such as Noa Winter, Kamran Behrouz, Ursula Eggli and Mylène Silva, may or may not be there but the desire is there, and the exhibition will also be about them.
With love and tender anger.
Lari Medawar
