What challenge are you currently facing in your artistic work?
With my series of embroidered teapots and embroidered teasticks. A tribute to the present, to sensuousness, to the dialogue between tradition and vision, and to the value of daily activities and the things we do.
“On my artistic path, I have used textile techniques as a medium for the application and realisation of my themes”
I often ask myself how and where in the art world of today a “position” is required; in the art world of today my works, often created over years, will find their space, their time and their place, since they are without a conceptual and intellectual background. Their structure and meaning only emerge little by little, piece by piece.
I am currently working on a series of embroidered vessels and manuscript pages. and manuscript pages, as well as writing countless texts for submissions, applications, articles and hall texts about my work.
What do you think is currently lacking in the art world and what should change so that this is no longer the case?
As I moved through the art world, I belatedly became aware of the possibilities of applying for exhibitions, funding and the need for networking, fluency with curatorships, grants, project and work/production funds and studio residencies.
My focus has been primarily on the development of an authentic artistic I am constantly amazed at how the profession of being an artist, which for me means the greatest possible freedom to shape one’s life in a way that inspires and enables artistic creation, has been transformed into a profession, a position that has to fulfill and conditions. Freedom and self-determination are no longer perceptible.
Now I am not only responsible for the creation, development and realisation of the works and their exhibitions, but I am also marketing and manager, photographer and graphic designer, press spokesperson and moderator, art mediator and workshop leader, panelist and exhibition curator. I write applications and fundraising, budgets and presentations, I create documentation and write press releases and hall texts, invitations and newsletters.
I take care of the website and the social media network, I’m an accountant and a secretary, I paint the rolls for the buffet and give the opening and closing speeches, and I do all sorts of jobs to make money so that I can afford all these jobs that aren’t really my job, and there’s not much time left for art. This is especially true when I’m brooding over the texts that describe my work.
Could the direct, personal, individual encounter with physical works ever happen again?
I am always amazed how being an artist, which for me means the greatest freedom, has become a profession, a position that must fullfil so many conditions.
I wish that being an artist was not about documenting, presenting, positioning.
What do you hope to gain from the next few months of Peer to Peer and the studio visits?
I hope that this valuable exchange and the visits to the studios will be continued in order to find out how the questions are evolving and whether solutions can be found together.
For example, I could imagine setting up a type of office contact point for writing texts and articles, for the press and art market, so that these would not have to be written by the artists themselves and an exchange would also be possible.
Marianne Büttiker, * in Olten. After studying at the School of Design in Basel, she worked for many years as a freelance textile designer and art mediator. The visual artist and writer lives and works in Basel and “wherever art takes me”.
The projects Archive of Sounds – Places and their Colours, 2007-2017, Senda d’aua, the Mineral Springs in the Engadine Window, a research project on the 25 mineral springs in the Lower Engadine, 2017-2023, Memory and Remembrance – Sources and Essences, 2020, On the Poetry of Dust and On the Poetry of Niches, 2021/22, are growing collections of drawings, paintings, photographs, embroideries, cartographies and texts, and are the starting point for exhibitions, installations and publications.