All the Lonely Things My Hands Have Done

 "I am the sculpture." (Hannah Villiger, 1983)

    Hannah Villiger (1951, Cham, Canton of Zug, Switzerland - 1997, Auw, Canton of Aargau, Switzerland) was a shooting star and one of Switzerland's most significant artists, whose life came to a premature end at the age of just 45. She defined herself as a sculptor working with photography and, from 1980 onwards, used a Polaroid camera to cartographically scan her own body and immediate surroundings, examining them for their sculptural qualities. She presented these results as large-scale prints and mural compositions enlarging her Polaroid films, which she programmatically titled Works, later Sculpturals and Blocks.

    Celebrated early on, Villiger's work has been the subject of numerous institutional solo exhibitions, most recently at Muzeum Susch (Susch, Switzerland, 2023) and the Centre Pompidou (Paris, France 2024).

    Alongside a large-scale Sculptural photograph, the exhibition will include 1970s works created prior to Villiger's use of the Polaroid camera. Comprising drawings, watercolors, photographs, and sculptural works on paper reminiscent of arte povera, these early works reveal the artist's initial focus on plants and their envelopes before she turned the lens toward her own body and skin.