KUNSTKOFFER / ART SUITCASE

Mali, Burkina 2000-01

Personal contacts, an invitation to the Storytelling Festival in Bobo Dioulasso, and a grant awarded to group member Pia Gisler by the Christoph Merian Foundation, made our African journey possible. Our first foreign trip confronted us with the reality of complicated travel arrangements, and this experience motivated us to select a type of work that would be easy to transport. We named it the ART SUITCASE. Five suitcases served as spaces for the five individual exhibitions that we carried along. The flexibility enabled us to set up the exhibition on very different sites: from the yard of the French Cultural Center in Bamako to the village of Ouahabou, midway between Bobo Dioulasso and Ouagadougou. We had a resounding echo with this installation, as well as lively exchanges and sustained contacts with local artists. In Mali, we came into close contact with the six-member collective KASOBANE, whose artists get together periodically to create a common painting. In their case, individuality is irrelevant; it has no significant value as such. This posture had an impression on us. So, we too learn that collective projects can be rewarding. The exchange with Africa has strengthened our commitment to realizing further common projects. The photographer Pia Zanetti accompanied us on the trip. In the home follow-up, a catalog was produced with her photographs.