Stitches. Home as Composition at KRONE COURONNE

Artists: Camille Farrah Buhler, Beth Dillon, Nathalie Diserens, Jeanne-Odette Evard, Lissy Funk, Elsi Giauque, Shamiran Istifan, Clare Kenny, Manutcher Milani, Jessy Razafimandimby, Pablo Rezzonico Bongcam, Marie Schumann

Exhibition title: Stitches. Home as Composition

Curated by: Gabrielle Boder, Tadeo Kohan and Camille Regli (Collectif Détente)

Venue: KRONE COURONNE, Biel/Bienne, Switzerland

Date: January 21 – February 26, 2022

Photography: © Nicolas Delaroche Studio / all images copyright and courtesy of the artists and KRONE COURONNE, Biel/Bienne

The second iteration of the research project Stitches – an investigation into the use of textile in contemporary art practices – presents Home as Composition, an exhibition focusing on textile in the domestic space and its relationship to composition and decoration.

The exhibition explores the way in which our interiors are furbished, decorated, composed and how they reflect identities, either chosen, attributed or in movement.

At the same time private and public, the home incorporates a prism of signs, forms, and cues about the way we see and present ourselves. Indeed, the interior carries a two-sided dimension: on the one hand intimate and personal, it presents on the other hand a semantic composition for the other – the guest or the intruder.

Stitches. Home as Composition stages a fictitious “decorative arrangement” that disturbs the principle of intimacy inherent to the private space. Here individuality is erased in favour of a reflection on the notions of class, taste and aesthetic norms, gender, forms of power and interpersonal relationships.

At the core of the exhibition lies also the question of heritage. Witness to cultural, social, historical and family histories, the domestic space features a collection of functional, contemplative and symbolic items, as well as expressive compositions and arrangements.

“What is at stake in housing is the possibility of maintaining a memory. Whether or not we live in the same place as our ancestors, the home relates to genealogy through its museum dimension. It should allow to be at the same time in the world among one’s contemporaries and linked to the past, to history.”

– Mona Chollet, Chez soi : Une odyssée de l’espace domestique, 2015, p. 42

If the domestic represents the space where heritage and personal/collective memories collide, how does it reflect individual identities, living patterns and thinking outside the home? How does one hold, or reject, their relationship to shared or intimate narratives and fictions?

Suggested by the hanging and choice of artworks, the visitor is invited to a wandering that could be read as a journey from the entrance to the living room, passing through the lobby or the boudoir. The exhibition also invites to rethink art history and the emancipation of the textile medium from craft and the domestic sphere.

Embodying the spaces of KRONE COURONNE, a former inn, Stitches. Home as Composition hence reflects upon objects and their relationship to the decorative and the construction of living and lived environments. The exhibition questions the meaning of “interior objects”, their spatialisation and ties to composition, patterns, colors, and decoration to become spaces to be and to host.

Exhibiton curated by Gabrielle Boder, Tadeo Kohan and Camille Regli (Collectif Détente) with loans from the Collection of the City of Biel/Bienne.

Stitches. Home as Composition, 2022, exhibition view: Jeanne-Odette Evard, Elsi Giauque, Marie Schumann

Stitches. Home as Composition, 2022, exhibition view: Manutcher Milani, Jeanne-Odette Evard, Marie Schumann, Elsi Giauque, Marie Schumann, Manutcher Milani

Stitches. Home as Composition, 2022, exhibition view: Jeanne-Odette Evard, Elsi Giauque