«[not] here» – An exhibition and soirées by Sarah Burger and Felipe Ribeiro
03.09.22–18.09.22

Events:
03.09.22, 18:00–02:00: Zurich’s LONG NIGHT of museums
06.09.22: Soiree «[not] here», exhibition opening (from 18:00) and dialogue (20:00) between Sarah Burger and Felipe Ribeiro
13.09.22, 20:00: Soiree «[not] here», improvised music to the works on display with Dimitri Howald

Sarah Burger (Zurich) and Felipe Ribeiro (Rio de Janeiro) met at a workshop where Ribeiro collected matters brought by different people to be assembled into soil and forming a «common ground». They discovered a shared interest in tectonics, earth and stone formations and how landscapes and geographies offer new accesses to history and time. The idea that an artistic exchange could be fruitful for both of them, sedimented. Cabaret Voltaire has always been a place for artistic exchange, international collaborations, and experimentation with ways to interact. This historical promise offered a fitting context for Burger and Ribeiro to enter a dialogue which unfolds along reflections and appropriations of materials’ characteristics, stories and histories. It soon became apparent that their collaboration was not only the exchange of mutually agreed suggestions but also the learning to know the other one as someone working, reflecting, associating and articulating differently. The common focus - as perhaps always in art making - lies on the question of what opens up in the in-between: Each glimpse of visual worlds and objects reveals various value systems, each juxtaposition of objects sheds new light on textures, forms, their narratives and symbolism. At Cabaret Voltaire, Burger and Ribeiro offer reflections and observations on matters of visualities, of language and bodies, perceiving presence as a living, un-fixed quality that also works through disappearance.

Sarah Burger, Dinge, 2021
Sarah Burger asked several friends to provide her lists of objects, which she then moulded out of clay while being blindfolded. The only rule Burger communicated was that the objects could be formed 1:1 and had to fit into the oven. This process led her to ask a variety of questions about things, form and meaning: Which objects are important to people? How can hands memorise things? What are the semantics of shapes?

Sarah Burger, Hands, Magic, Hands, 2021
Hands, Magic, Hands is a digital collage based on a found image of hands and a photograph of a quickly made, non-figurative sculpture made of Plasteline. The hands seem to evoke the sculpture, magically shaping it without touching it.

Sarah Burger, All the landscapes I’ve ever seen, 2022
The video-poem is a reflection on the presence and absence of different places, on memorised sites that have never been physically visited before. Burger produced the work during a residency in Sofia, Bulgaria.

Felipe Ribeiro, Dematerialize i & ii, 2021-2022
Dematerialize is part of a larger series entitled Revolving Actions and experiments with moments of abstraction of the human figure in the hope that visual destabilisation will allow for other means of relations. In both works, the face is covered by a golden metal tissue that veils facial expression but still foregrounding the head as a shape to appear, while the body is subjected to a blurring undefinition. Dematerialize i - dawn is an action that delves into the ambivalence of disappearing by becoming in evidence. Fomented in a specific space-time coordinate, the performance, takes place at dawn on St George’s Day, a celebration that in Rio de Janeiro confounds the Catholic saint with the African deity Ogun. Forged as a symbol of protection and resistance, devotees preach wearing St George’s clothes so that the enemy «has eyes but does not see them». The performance materialises such vow as a mingling of anonymity and exuberance. In Dematerialize ii - dusk, we see long-exposure shots of a trembling body in the dark, intended to lose its contours. The endured action started in Rio de Janeiro at 5:27 pm, at full moonrise, crossing the evening and edging the next day.

Felipe Ribeiro, Whispers, 2022
Visitors are invited to listen to the sound installation aimed at the walls of the Cabaret Voltaire. Fragmented narratives, text excerpts, imaginative logics and dreams are voiced out so that the walls are able to hear and retain them. The wall is perceived as a concrete matter of condensed histories, hence the need to acknowledge what they’ve absordbed and heard, and to purposefully furnish them with further sounds and narratives.

Zurich-based artist Sarah Burger studied visual arts, philosophy, comparative literature and linguistics. Her practice also includes artistic research (PhD, ZHdK Zurich and Kunstuniversität Linz). The artist Felipe Ribeiro lives in Rio de Janeiro and is a professor of dance and film studies at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. He studied film (MA) and holds a PhD in visual arts.

The exhibition is supported by the Annemarie Schindler-Stiftung