C'est à ses performances de carnaval qui rappellent à la fois les mystères du moyen-âge et les jeux du carnaval en reprenant des thèmes de l'histoire de l'art et de la culture pop, que l'artiste anglaise Monster Chetwynd (*1973 Londres) doit sa renommée internationale, même si elle s'est aussi fait connaître dans les années 2000 sous les noms de Spartacus ou Marvin Gaye Chetwynd. Première artiste « performatrice » à avoir été nominée pour le célèbre prix Turner en 2012, elle occupe encore aujourd'hui une position de premier plan dans le domaine de la performance contemporaine. L'uvre de Chetwynd est cependant beaucoup plus large : elle travaille avec la peinture et la sculpture, les installations et les films. Sa pratique artistique est marquée par l'appel et l'association des sources culturelles les plus diverses. Elle crée du nouveau, joint l'humour à la curiosité et cherche des collaborations telles sont les caractéristiques les plus significatives de son travail. L'exposition à la Kunsthaus Zürich présente pour la première fois l'ensemble de sa création en Suisse. Plus de 60 uvres des 25 dernières années y sont inclues à une architecture immersive, tandis que l'ouvrage qui accompagne l'exposition « Trompe-l'il Cleavage » déploie la diversité de son travail sur un mode esthétique convenu avec l'artiste.

Autorentext

Anne Demester (b. 1975) studied at Ghent University Germanic philology, she was assistant of Jan Hoet, realized a couple of exhibitions for him in Belgium, Holland and Germany. From 2003- 2006 she was director of W139, an exhibition and production space for contemporary art in Amsterdam. In May 2006, she became the director of De Appel in Amsterdam. On February 2014, she was appointed director of the Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem, Netherlands. From October 2022 on she is director of the Kunsthalle Zurich, the largest art museum of Switzerland. Emily Pethick (b. 1975) has been the director of the Rijksakademie van beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam since 2018. She was previously the director of The Showroom, London (2008- 2018, of Casco, Utrecht (2005- 2008), and curator at Cubitt, London (2003- 2004). She has contributed to publications and co-edited numerous books and has participated in numerous juries for artist awards, including the 2017 Turner Prize. Elisabeth Bronfen (b. 1958) is an author of many monographs, scholary essays, and journalism in the field of visual culture, cultural analysis, and literary studies. She is known for her work on representation of feminity, death and the aesthetic, on hysteria, on a cultural history of the night, on Hollywood cinema, and on seriality and TV drama. Her newest publication engages with seriality in Shakespeare's oeuvre. She calls her hermeneutic process " crossmapping" . She has also written for many exhibition catalogs and has curated several exhibitions herself. Raphael Gygax (b. 1980) is a curator, art historian, and author based in Locarno. He studied art history, film, and drama studies at the Universities of Bern and Zurich. The topic of his PhD was on the use of instrumentalised bodies in contemporary art. From 2003- 2019 he was curator at the Migros Museum for Contemporary Art in Zurich. He also curated exhibitions in Paris, London, Locarno, and New York. From 2019- 2023, he was the deputy director of the Department of Fine Art at Zurich University of the Arts, and since fall 2023, he has been independent curator at the Kunsthaus Zurich. Monster Chetwynd (b. 1973, London) lives and works in Zurich. She graduated from the Royal College of Art with an MA in painting (2004), and holds a BA in Fine Art from the Slade School of Art (2000) and a BA in Social Anthropology and History from UCL (1995). In addition to her artistic practice, Monster Chetwynd teaches in the BA Fine Arts Program at the Zurich University of the Arts. In 2012 she was nominated for the Turner Prize. Also she had numerous partially great international solo exhibitions: 2024 BMCA Nanjing, 2023 Schirn Kunsthall Frankfurt, 2021 Studio Voltaire London.