Behausung took place at Notgalerie during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. The exhibition explores the home as both a place of retreat and protection and a place of confinement and restriction. During lockdown, familiar surroundings could offer stability and security while simultaneously becoming increasingly confining. Everyday routines and simple, repeatable actions became ways of creating structure and remaining anchored in the present.
During the first lockdown, Iris Weigel wrote short poems every day for a month, which became part of the exhibition. Alongside these, existing and newly created collages explore experiences of confinement and openness, loneliness and connection. The idea of Notgalerie, a former emergency church, informs the exhibition’s approach: spaces and materials are adapted to changing and constrained circumstances, using whatever is available.
A performance by Victoria Primus, with costume by Liliana Schaber and sound by Philippe Mainz, takes up these themes through everyday routines and gestures such as waking up, getting through the day, and finding moments of a broader perspective within an uncertain situation.
Photos: Reinhold Zisser, Xenia Fastnacht
