selected exhibitions

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Installation view, 57th Venice Biennial, Swiss Pavilion 2017
Photo: Ugo Carmeni
Installation view, 57th Venice Biennial, Swiss Pavilion 2017
Photo: Ugo Carmeni
Installation view, 57th Venice Biennial, Swiss Pavilion 2017
Photo: Ugo Carmeni
Installation view, 57th Venice Biennial, Swiss Pavilion 2017
Photo: Ugo Carmeni
Installation view, 57th Venice Biennial, Swiss Pavilion 2017
Photo: Ugo Carmeni
Installation view, 57th Venice Biennial, Swiss Pavilion 2017
Photo: Ugo Carmeni
Installation view, 57th Venice Biennial, Swiss Pavilion 2017
Photo: Ugo Carmeni
Installation view, 57th Venice Biennial, Swiss Pavilion 2017
Photo: Ugo Carmeni
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Installation view, 57th Venice Biennial, Swiss Pavilion 2017
Photo: Ugo Carmeni
Installation view, 57th Venice Biennial, Swiss Pavilion 2017
Photo: Ugo Carmeni
Installation view, 57th Venice Biennial, Swiss Pavilion 2017
Photo: Ugo Carmeni
Installation view, 57th Venice Biennial, Swiss Pavilion 2017
Photo: Ugo Carmeni

Swiss Pavilion, 57th Venice Biennial

Teresa Hubbard / Alexander Birchler, Carol Bove

Women of Venice
Curated by Phillipp Kaiser
May 13 – November 26, 2017

Synopsis

Teresa Hubbard / Alexander Birchler’s Flora and the accompanying work, Bust, is based on their discoveries about the unknown American artist Flora Mayo, with whom the Swiss sculptor Alberto Giacometti had a love affair in Paris in the 1920s. While Giacometti is one of the most celebrated artists of the 20th century, Mayo’s oeuvre has been destroyed and her biography was previously relegated as a footnote in Giacometti scholarship.

Hubbard / Birchler reframe this history and bring Mayo’s compelling biography to life through a feminist perspective that interweaves reconstruction, reenactment, and documentary into a hybrid form of storytelling. As a double-sided film installation, each side of Flora reveals a different story while sharing the same soundtrack. The work is conceived as a conversation between Mayo and her son, David—whom the artists discovered after an exhaustive search, living near Los Angeles. Flora generates a multifaceted dialogue—between a mother and son, Mayo and Giacometti, Paris and Los Angeles, and past and present.

Additional Information

Review By Gregory Volk

At the Edge of the Frame 2017
Teresa Hubbard / Alexander Birchler
in conversation with Philipp Kaiser

A conversation between Christina Végh,
Alexander Birchler and Teresa Hubbard."