ANDREA CINDY RAEMY. News. CV. About.

Scattered, but there

HKB CAP diploma show
La Voirie, Biel/Bienne
20.-26.6.2024


For her Master's exhibition at La Voirie in Biel/Bienne, Andrea Raemy has chosen to present an arena of circus-like figures. By invoking the characters traditionally assembled under a big top and giving them the title Broad Shoulders, she automatically places us in front of the societal spectacle of relations of domination.

Five plinths form this half-moon scene. Their heavyweight construction is equally suited to the museum and commercial sectors, as their human-sized form, while partially respecting the conventioris of the plinth, also evokes the counter or display unit of a luxury boutique. While they all form a convex arena in their positioning, one of the plinths is turned towards the inside of the semi-circle, inviting spectators to visit the backstage area.

On each of these plinths is a kind of breastplate that seems to be traced in the air, almost like a 3D digital drawing on a screen. These simple structures of bent and welded metal wire are surprisingly enhanced by a turquoise colour that makes them float against the matt grey of the plinths. We move closer and further away, and the shapes that are just an outline seem to move with us, as if transformed by a computer mouse. The clumsy plinths take on the dimension of magical supports for these fine structures in motion, and we come to accept this combination of the massive and the light as an irony that leaves us a little uncomfortable, a kind of silent provocation to good taste.

As for the breastplates, they are also busts, perhaps even prostheses that enhance the self, drawing on several visual registers to do so. The shoulders, for example, are disproportionately broad, like those of the suits worn in the eighties by company directors or mafiosi (categories that are pleonastic). But there's also a nostalgic futuristic quality to these shapes that we see so often in video games, and the idea of armour emerges. They are shells that make you feel like a soldier, tools for the self-empowerment advocated by personal development literature. They are stopgaps for surviving the essentialisation and rugged individualism advocated by neo-liberalism, which also demands a flawless overall performance, in which distinction merely serves an unquestionable order of things...

So much so that we almost forget the role of each one, and in the end we don't try to identify the clown or the contortionist, they are simply part of the same round, that of the search for legitimacy which can only be obtained through success, which in turn can only be commercial...And yet, the reference to the circus makes the whole show a little ponderous, very 19th century revisited in 3D, and the desire for success becomes a false solution to a very real problem, that of a societal paradigm shift.

The breastplates are visibly importable, so the whole installation is an illusion. And while at first glance these sculptures give an impression of perfection, we are quickly caught out by their manual work(wo)manship, which means we can be sure that we are not looking at prototypes, but at the analysis of a system.

It is a social critique that mocks the strategies of power and its attributes, but also outlines the possibilities for change. Possibilities that are straightforward and self-ex-planatory, that use sculpture as a mental activation of floating objects that are uniquely performative in an exchange with the viewer, and that seize conceptual tools to recreate contemporary narratives, far removed from dogmatism and expected aesthetic forms. Finally, possibilities that value inconsistency and humour as real strategies for reflections that appeal to our collective imagination.


List of works:

Broad Shoulders

Exhibition views: 2024, Scattered, but there, La Voirie, Biel/Bienne, CH
Flyer Design: Romain Iannone
Photo credits: Andrea Cindy Raemy