Eva BORNER
Eva Borner was born in Switzerland, a graduate of the Basel School of Art and Design, and has been at the heart of the Swiss scene for over fifteen years.
“Eva Borner’s artistic creation finds a very diverse and always concise expression in photographs and photo paintings, video works and sound sculptures, expansive multimedia installations and text objects. Her work is drawn from her personal experiences and is supported by her open participation in the well-being of the lives she encounters, in their struggles as well as the political and social conditions which are decisive to their circumstances. Eva Borner looks in places where others look away. She translates this individual and private dimension artistically in expanded contexts and consequently develops works of great poignancy and profundity. The use of media technology in memorable visual and audio settings enables Eva Borner to make her contextual visions tangible for the participant. Characteristic of the works of the multifaceted artist is the interrelationship with the fields of film, literature, music, and dance, in which she repeatedly finds forms of interaction with other cultural workers.”
On Disappearing
This work was provoked by the artist’s experience as a volunteer helper in a refugee camp at the port of Piraeus and her insight into the life stories and situations of those stranded there. Eva Borner embossed in olive oil soap from Greece the central phrases of the “Universal Declaration of Human Rights” from 1948, which are mostly disregarded across the world: the “right to life and liberty”, the “right to seek asylum”, and the “right to freedom of belief, and religion”, to name but a few core statements. Together with the materiality of the soap, the phrases create a tension in the content which awakens manifold associations. On the one hand, the image arises of how, when using the soaps, these tenets are “diluted” and slowly disappear. On the other hand, associations to such idioms as “washing one’s hands of responsibility”, “to soft-soap someone”, and “one hand washing the other” emerge. The presentation of the soaps and their sensuous nature prompt further thought. The soaps are laid out to form a carpet, a stringently geometric pattern of two adjoining triangles. The deliberately positioned lighting lends the soap a gold shimmer, and the scent they exude permeates the entire exhibition space. Smells in particular can activate feelings and memories. In this sense, not only do processes of displacing and forgetting manifest themselves, but the installation can also be understood as an “ephemeral memorial”.