Nina Staehli

Nina Staehli (born 30 August 1961 in Zug) is a Swiss artist based in Berlin and Lucerne.

TearHead in Cherokee NC
TearHead in Nashville TN

Artwork

Nina Staehli has realized interventions, performances and art exhibitions in Switzerland, Germany, France, Italy and the United States. Her first work cycles consist of sculptures, paintings and installations. Given the fact that the conventional canvas has been absent in Staehli’s raw and expressive painting from the very beginning, the canvas being replaced by everyday materials such as corrugated boards or paper bags, Staehli’s art departs from the sheltered space of traditional art. In a second phase, her artworks metamorphose into wearable sculptures, i.e., the so-called “Big Heads”, which in turn become props for interacting with the real world in performances and videos. Drawing on years of acting experience, she integrates photography, film, literature and theater into her unique body of work, and has collaborated with curators, museums, galleries, writers and art journalists to do so. She has also carried out a number of site-specific art projects in Switzerland and Berlin.

Bunny in Sicily

Education

Selected exhibitions, performances and films

A feast for Yoshi + Moshi

Solo exhibitions

Nina Staehli’s solo exhibitions have never been mere presentations of her work. She has always based them, and still bases them, on real or fictional people or subjects, such as gentrification. She researches her subject matter for a long time, immersing herself in it as she develops entire work complexes of videos and performances that she makes both by herself and with the help of her production team. It is for these performances that she creates her mask-like “Big Heads”, sculptures and paintings. This mix turns Staehli’s exhibitions into theatrical productions that play out before, during and after the opening of the show.

Paper Bag Paintings
Card Board Paintings
Ruby Dean
Last Supper

Performances

Nina Staehli’s performances are always set in public spaces and never announced in advance. Her goal is to test herself as an artist, the artworks and interventions in a place that has nothing to do with art. The audience is thus a tabula rasa, encountering her art without any preconceived notions. Moreover, due to the minimal action of the performance participants, viewers are forced to confront themselves and their own emotions. As a result, the audience’s reactions are necessarily immediate, occasionally heated. In the style of early female performance artists of the 1960s – e.g., Yoko Ono or Marina_Abramović – Staehli’s actions are probing the power of art and the mindset of the audience.

Yoshis + Moshis
touching heroes

Group exhibitions

Head Download Kunsthalle Luzern
Narcissus

Films and shooting locations

At first glance, Nina Staehli’s videos appear unsettling, sometimes even heavy-hearted. And, on a narrative level, there doesn’t seem to be much going on: the videos break with all conventions of suspense and plot as the artist shuns any and all knowledge of film norms and rules. What’s more, Staehli does not bestow upon her “Big Head” protagonists any form of verbal articulation. And yet, it is precisely this reduced state that, as in her performances, inspires the imagination of the audience in her videos. Because for those who engage in the slow river, the forlornness and melancholy of the figures with their big heads and clumsy movements will turn into poetry, and the pace of time will gradually slacken and soften. Out of the minimalistic plot and visual material, each viewer constructs his or her own film that is only enhanced by the soundtrack made for the film and forms an artistic quality of its own. And, given that the “Big Head” characters make do without any language, the soundtrack becomes the individual characters’ idiosyncratic means of expression.

film still Culture Clash
film still Occupy ORF

Selected collaborative works

In line with her universalistic approach, Staehli always seeks out working partners who are best suited to the specific project she is working on. The nature of her ever-changing collaborative work is similar to the way in which the audience mirrors what she does in an unprotected public space. Time and again her collaborative work has provided her with new ideas in a way that a fixed working arrangement could not.

Awards

Glory Land sculptures

Monographs

References

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