About
Short biography
Andrea Cindy Raemy (*1980 Fribourg CH) lives and works in Bern. She holds a Bachelor's degree in Fine Arts from the Zurich University of the Arts and is currently enrolled in the Master’s program in Contemporary Arts Practice at the University of the Arts in Bern.
Her sculptural and installative works are process and experience-based. She reshapes stories and commodities of everyday life into strange objects and creatures. Raemy believes in the transformative power that lies in materials, craft and assemblage.
Her works have been shown most recently at Bacio, Bern CH (2023); Cabane B*, Bern CH (2023); Cantonale 22: Pasquart, Biel/Bienne CH + La Nef, St-Ursanne CH (2022); WallStreet, Freiburg CH (2022); Cantonale 21: MjA, Moutier CH + La Nef, Le Noirmont (2021); Rote Fabrik Summer Camp, Zurich CH (2021); Le Commun, Geneva CH (2021); Bagno Popolare, Baden CH (2021); Cantonale 20: EAC Les Halles, Porrentruy CH (2020); al_vista, Zurich CH (2020).
Artist statement
What does comfort mean in the context of a home?
This space is primarily there to protect us architecturally, socially and mentally. It is a safe and constant place. But from its floor plan onwards, no home is ever neutral, whether in its distribution of rooms, roles, identities, classes, expectations or in the interweaving of our public and private spheres. This distribution and its occupation can end up suffocating and become deeply uncomfortable, contrary to their initial hope.
I like to reveal this ambivalence/ambiguity of the concept called home and create analogies between interior spaces and states of the body and mind. For I feel the intimate and the interior to be so close and so different at the same time.
To do this, I invite my practice into existing structures and narratives, into the déjà-vu of popular culture, and then subvert the formal and conceptual language of objects, furniture and materials of the domestic sphere.
Bed linen, interior decoration and everyday objects are used as a medium in their own right and are constantly reappearing in my work. I recover materials and objects that have already existed; that are already potentially full of history and have probably already occupied a space, elsewhere, at another time. In addition to the primary utility of these objects and materials, which is to facilitate our daily lives, their design gives the illusion of harmony between our consciousness and our space. Through its omnipresence in our daily lives, furniture also takes on our memories, emotions and feelings, both good and bad. Once they become intimate, their emotional value exceeds their material and aesthetic value. A closer look reveals complex constructions in which moods, social power structures and the fabrication of attachment are manifested.
Through reappropriation, transformation or assemblage, my works become strange creatures, absurd objects or dreamlike landscapes. Once installed on the wall or the floor, these resculpted objects are altars of waking dreams, of taking back control of everyday life, of our ability to break the limits of the space we have chosen to occupy or that is imposed on us.