Kathrin Siegrist

Kathrin Siegrist’s artistic practice, while rooted in painting, is concerned with textile. She is present at The Oracle with two pieces, one at the entrance of the Museum of Modern Art (MG+) and the other in the vicinity of the Plečnik Auditorium in Tivoli Park. With the latter, A Shade We Share, she is for the first time intervening in an outdoor public space, expanding the potential for interaction and adding a certain fluidity to her piece as she observes how it changes with the wind and sunlight through the course of the exhibition.

The area right next to the Plečnik Auditorium in Tivoli Park is one that the artist was immediately drawn to. By definition, a public park is an open, welcoming space, leading her to wonder how she can contribute, how to invite people to interact with art, accept it as part of their environment, even if temporarily, and how to design an open framework for a new community. Siegrist interacts with the auditorium itself, a minimalist construction that in a way encompasses its immediate environment. We can thus imagine her installation as a piece of scenography that broke away from the stage and became an autonomous creature. She sees her work as a place of continuous rehearsal, echoing this function of the auditorium.

The installation’s defining feature is bright fabric – reused emergency parachute nylon. It is a material designed to endure, but even the slightest flaw renders it unusable. Once discarded, it is difficult to repurpose. Kathrin Siegrist colours the fabric piece by piece and uses it to construct installations that are in dialogue with their sites, open to interaction with their audience, and, when not safely within the walls of a museum, with entirely uncontrollable elements such as the weather.

Supported by Pro Helvetia, Pfyl Stiftung, Erna und Curt Burgauer Stiftung, Kunstkredit Basel-Stadt and Gemeinde Riehen.