What impact does Geneva’s role as the global capital of humanitarian action have on the work of artists who trained here? And more generally, can art help us to better understand humanitarian issues?
Concerned: 30 Artists on Humanitarian Issues, the MICR’s latest temporary exhibition, addresses these questions, showcasing the work of artists and designers from the Geneva School of Art and Design (HEAD) and the Supimax School in Dakar. They have all competed for the Prix Art Humanité, a competition launched in 2015 by the Geneva Red Cross, HEAD and the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Working in a variety of media – photography, video, drawing, installations, interior design and fashion – these talented individuals respond to the foremost principle of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement: humanity. That is, preventing and alleviating human suffering wherever it may be found.
Their work takes up a variety of themes, including complex and sensitive questions of identity, the body and the status of women, dignity, the ethical use of technology, migration, and information overload. They each present a unique perspective – rooted in their personal experience – on contemporary humanitarian principles and practice.
Currently in residency at the Cité internationale des arts, the artist Hugo Hemmi received a carte blanche invitation, as part of the exhibition. Winner of the Jury Prize "Art and Humanity", in 2017, the director of the MICR entrusts him with the courtyard of the museum to create a new work in situ.
The evolving work "Cabane" was born. An installation proposing to the visitors to engrave in the stone the commitments of their life, then to hang them on a metal structure.
The use of precarious materials refers to the 60s, with the Arte Povera movement. By drawing inspiration from the past, Hugo Hemmi suggests an immersive installation that transports us to the future while encouraging personal and collective introspection. The codes of a "traditional" cabin are thwarted, inviting visitors to project themselves into a speculative fabulation*.
Concerned enables people from all walks of life – visitors, aid workers and artists – to come together and explore this question. In giving artists the opportunity to reflect on humanitarian action, the MICR wanted to encourage both the general public to do likewise and humanitarian workers to view their own contributions in a new light. This exhibition allows visitors to grasp the complexity of humanitarian action, consider other points of view and engage in dialogue, at different points in space and time. An international, cross-disciplinary online symposium will extend this process throughout the month of May, culminating in a publication.
*Speculative fabulation is a concept of the author Donna Haraway. She considers that it is necessary to invent and create new fictional discourses in order to disturb/change the established order.
Hugo Hemmi (Switzerland) is in résidency at the Cité internationale des arts through the Simón I. Patiño Foundation.