Stitches: A Haunted House and Other Ghost Stories at Villa Bernasconi, Lancy

Populated by fragile, intangible, and unsettling presences, Villa Bernasconi presents Stitches: A Haunted House and Other Ghost Stories. In continu-ation of the curatorial project Stitches, initiated in 2020 around contemporary textile practices, the exhi-bition explores the connections between textiles and haunting.

The project reveals the spectral potentialities of fabric: veiling, transparency, imprinting. By unveiling what cannot—or should not—be seen, textiles reveal invisible and intangible forms. The material becomes a surface for projection, a tactile medium im-bued with memory. The exhibition focuses on what is transmitted beneath the surface: family and cultural legacies, repressed and collective fears, fragmentary, intimate memories. It questions how domestic spaces, ordinary gestures, social structures, and forgotten stories can become sites of haunting—traces of memory that elude rational understanding.

In dialogue with the architecture of Villa Bernasconi, the house—in-habited by artworks— becomes a subject in itself. Throughout the rooms, visitors are invited to navigate among voices, absences, ap-paritions, and suspended narratives. Textile and sculptural installa-tions, videos, performances, and sound pieces together create a sensory experience that oscillates between popular and historical references, critical perspectives, and raw emotions. Here, the ghost is seen as a messenger between worlds, a bearer of hidden stories, and a guardian of memory in the face of oblivion. A magical, spiritual,

and fictional figure, it occupies an ambivalent place in everyday life, intimacy, and the world of entertainment. With tenderness, mischief, or fear, the works in the exhibition summon the presence of these spectral, imaginary, and familiar beings: these “others” with whom we coexist, who follow and accompany us.

Latefa Wiersch (*1982) lives and works in Zurich. She studied Art at the Uni-versität der Künste Berlin and the Hochschule der Künste Bern. In her artistic universe, monstrosity coexists with gentleness and vulnerability. Her works question constructions of identity, colonial history, and the experience of social roles

Gregory Tara Hari (*1993) lives and works in Zurich. His artistic practice en-compasses a wide range of media, including performance, painting, drawing, photography, video, and sculpture. Through performances, sculptures, and in-stallations, the artist questions colonial legacies, dominant narratives, and their lingering ghosts

Meret Oppenheim (1913–1985) is one of the leading artists of the twentieth century. In the 1970s, the artist created several works reproducing her iconic piece in fur and textile, surrounded by artificial flowers.

Li Tavor (*1983) is an architect, composer, performer, sound and visual artist currently based in Zürich. Through Bright Curtains I, II, III, and Dark Curtains I, II, III, the artist exposes the tensions between visibility and intimacy, protection and vulnerability

Sonia Kacem (*1985) lives and works in Geneva. In the series Ensemble of Three (Familiar Strangeness), the artist explores textiles and their ability to re-veal or conceal what they cover, lending the works an unsettling physicality

Dorota Gawęda (*1986) and Eglė Kulbokaitė’s (*1987) are an artist duo based in Basel (CH) and Paris (FR). Their multimedia and multisensory practice draws on a post-digital aesthetic informed by ecofeminist research, speculative nar-ratives, and Baltic and Slavic pagan traditions

Starting in the 1970s, Heidi Bucher (1926-1993) created her first latex works: architectural-scale memorial skins. Michael Koechlin’s film for German televi-sion, both documentary and artistic, traces the artist’s creative process in the former Bellevue psychiatric clinic in Kreuzlingen

Ryan Gander’s (*1976) is a British artist whose work investigates the mecha-nisms of perception and knowledge production. Between everyday objects and fictional constructions, the artist engages in narrative games and associative processes, inviting the public to reconsider the meaning of forms and the sto-ries they suggest

Léa Katharina Meier (*1995) is a Swiss performance, theater and visual artist. With Jardin secret des ordures des sentiments, she invites viewers into a nar-rative universe where colorful imagery and humor intersect with hints of queer sexuality, ambiguous emotions, and magical hybridity

Benoît Piéron (*1983) lives and works in Paris. His work draws on the experi-ence of the suffering body, turning it into a space for attention and transfor-mation. Positioning himself as a crip artist, he creates work permeated by ill-ness, hospitalization, and survival—which he treats as sites for creation, shar-ing, and joyful potentiality

Nina Rieben (*1992) lives and work in Basel (CH). At once poetic and incisive, her works summon memories of emotions, stories, and fantasies with tender irony

Gotscho (*1945) is a Parisian artist. Since the 1980s, he has been developing a practice that blurs the boundaries between disciplines—visual arts, photog-raphy, theater, and fashion—as well as genres

Claire Van Lubeek (*1990) is a Dutch artist currently working and living in Ge-neva (CH). Her work explores the visual and narrative strategies of horror while questioning the brutality of reality and the normative structures that govern our lives

Serge Comte (*1966), Vidya Gastaldon (*1974), Christophe Terpent and Jean-Michel Wicker’s (*1970) short film Goodly Gory Ghosts reveals how tex-tiles cover, conceal, and shape the invisible that inhabits us. What is hidden beneath the sheet? What stories, masquerades, or ancient games haunt our daily lives?

Sandar Tun Tun (*1989) is an artist, DJ and composer based in Marseille and Geneva. Their work Light.wav explores what attracts and repels us, fascinates and entertains us, discourages us when confronted with fear.