Céline Eidenbenz – författare

Raphael Ritz (1829–1894) is one of the most important artists to have emerged from the Swiss canton of Valais. In the 1850s, Ritz, who later became famous as the “Raphael of the Alps,” studied at the renowned Academy of Art in Düsseldorf, Germany, and perfected his technique in the genre of mountain painting, which focuses on the relationship between landscape and man. Ritz, who felt a strong connection to his roots, created landscape idylls in faraway Düsseldorf for an audience that appreciated regional peculiarities. At times with a touch of irony, he put his works at the service of a modern effort to illustrate the timeless character of everyday life.This new monograph looks at the work of the Valais-born artist beyond national borders and frames it in both the Swiss and international artistic contexts of the time. Ritz’s correspondence with his father, Lorenz Justin Ritz, who was a painter as well, is also comprehensively examined for the first time: it constitutes an important testimony to his artistic self-discovery. Selected photographs by Swiss contemporary artists from the museum’s collection show the Valais of today and establish a connection between Ritz’s ethnographic view of his own origins and the present.Text in French and German.

James Baldwin’s perennial essay as a starting point for artistic exploration of racism.James Baldwin (1924–1987) penned his famous essay Stranger in the Village in the early 1950s during a stay in the Swiss Alpine village of Loèches-les-Bains. It is the starting point for an artistic examination of the subject of racism in Switzerland, and in the art and culture industries in particular, that is documented in this multilingual French/German book.Works by international contemporary artists — including Igshaan Adams, Kader Attia, Omar Ba, James Bantone, Marlene Dumas, Melanie Grauer, Jonathan Horowitz, Sasha Huber, Pierre Koralnik, Glenn Ligon, Martine Syms, and others—react to Baldwin’s literary-political treatise. Essays contributed by distinguished authors supplement the artistic debate and highlight the consequences of the prevailing structural racism.The book is an invitation to break taboos. It holds a mirror up to us, raising questions that concern us all, and reveals the topicality of everyday racism to every one of us through the artworks it features.Text in French, English and German.

Pauline Julier, born in 1981, graduated in political sciences from the Université Grenoble Alpes and in photography from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure de la Photographie d’Arles; she also completed the SPEAP Art and Politics Experimental Program at Sciences Po in Paris. Her multimedia works featured in this book take us through the geological ages of planet Earth and into space. At the interface of documentary and fiction, Julier takes us on a dizzying journey through space and time. She interweaves different histories and combines natural disasters with the Anthropocene’s paradigm shifts. Looking into the past and the future, Julier investigates highly topical questions about the unlimited use of natural resources, escapism, and the colonisation of space.Conceived and designed as a work of art in its own right, this volume offers a comprehensive insight into Pauline Julier’s art and thought through a conversation with eminent scholar of science and technology studies Donna Haraway, and contributions by curator Céline Eidenbenz; anthropologist and writer Nastassja Martin; and art historian, curator, and author Chus Martínez.Text in English and German.