metropolis m

Bice Curiger gained international fame as the editor of the Swiss art magazine Parkett. This year she is responsible for ILLUMInations, the central exhibit at the Venice Biennale. Metropolis M spoke with her in Zurich.

With an eye for key moments in artists’ careers, she ensured that the Kunsthaus in Zurich was the starting point for a number of high profile retrospectives of, amongst others, Sigmar Polke, Katharina Fritsch and Fischli & Weiss. It is names like these and the circulation of her curated projects to the Guggenheim in New York and the Pompidou Centre in Paris that give an idea of Bice Curiger’s importance on the international stage. Yet she was surprised at the invitation to curate the central exhibition at the Venice Biennale, and had to postpone pending projects to take it on. An interview on the roots of her practice as curator, her relationship to art history and her plans for the summer’s biggest show.

Barnaby Drabble

Everyone has to start somewhere, and for you it was Zurich. What were the first exhibitions you organised there?

Bice Curiger

‘Well, while still studying, I was writing about art for the newspapers and we did some shows. The first we did in 1974; we were a collective of women artists and students and it was a feminist show, in a small way a communal explosion. It’s almost funny looking back on it. But I remember it now because it prepared the way for another show in 1980, which was called Saus und Braus. The second exhibition really hit a chord because this was a moment in Zurich where the music scene was very strong – particularly punk and feminist bands – while the art scene existed only as a sort of underground. This was the first time Peter Fischli and Davis Weiss showed together, for example, and at that time Fischli was designing album covers for bands. Saus und Braus was like a statement: “Here is a new generation, we think differently about art. There is a whole scene down here and a pool of creativity which you up there in the museums ignore.”’

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Barnaby Drabble

Some biennial exhibitions function as a survey of ‘who is hot and who is not’, while others appear to bring works together more as an illustration of a particular philosophy about art. Which category does yours fall into?

Bice Curiger

‘Well, I am a curator who comes from a museum background and from an education in art history, but I have always been interested in contemporary art. I am not the kind of curator who comes from cultural studies, philosophy or sociology and as a result I am sceptical towards exhibitions which try to illustrate theory. I love art, and for Venice I want to present a show that concentrates on the core business. First you look at the institution and ask: what is the Biennale? And you find your answer in the place and its character: there are these pavilions, there are these imaginary national borders, there is the beauty of Venice and there is the light, which provides such a common theme for art. All together there are some conventions to be broken up. In the title for the exhibition ILLUMInations, I wanted to highlight these things, taking one word that stands in for a concept. It takes the more conservative aspect of the theme of light into another dimension by colliding with the provocative theme of nations. The question of national representation at the Venice Biennale remains taboo and neurotic. This great anachronism, that in the midst of this totally globalised art world curators take their pavilions and say, “This is my territory and I do my national show”, seems so revealing and interesting. Personally, I am happy that I am not alone in Venice and that I am surrounded by commissioners and curators working on the pavilions. In the twenty-first century, “nation” is a sticky and loaded word, but we are working with art here, and where, if not in art, can we discuss sticky and loaded terms?’

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Barnaby Drabble

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