Nicole Bachmann works across video, text, sound, installation and performance, to investigate the wider socio-political impact of how meaning is made and who has access to making it.
Her practice is grounded in writing which serves as initial material for her performances and sculptures reflecting her interest in utterance and performative text. Its circular movement from text, to audio, to sculpture and then to performance interests the artist as it highlights the relationship between poetry, voice, and the body.
Largely based on feminist and emancipatory thought, Bachmann's work thinks of the body as a place where meaning and knowledge are produced using voice and movement, to form an “embodied vocabulary” that creates narratives and stories away from dominant world concepts and beliefs. In becoming other-too, Bachmann questions the structures of social norms and inequalities through her own and others' bodies and voices. This is inspired by Rosi Braidotti's concept of how people as subjects are embodied and embedded in the world we are sharing through relational affectivities.
Bachmann's predominantly collaborative practice reflects this subversion, evoking a sense of togetherness and reciprocity to search for meaning away from the prescribed set of definitions. Activating the individual as well as the group, Bachmann questions how to become bodies of social and political change.
Working in mediums which are still underrepresented within the art market because of their non-physical, temporal aspects, Bachmann again wants to interrupt tendencies inherent to a system.
Nicole Bachmann (b. 1973, Zurich, CH) works and lives between Zurich, CH and London, UK. She holds a Diploma in Fine Art from Zurich University of the Arts (2007) and an MFA in Fine Art from Goldsmiths, University of London (2010). Awards Include: Nominated for the Prix litteraire Bernard Heidsieck-Centre Pompidou 2022; Swiss Art Awards, shortlisted (2019); Freiraumstipendium, Zurich, CH (2018); Werkbeitrag, Stadt Zurich, winner (2015 & 2018); Art Prize 2008, Nationale Suisse (2008); Swiss Design Award (2003).
Bachmann has been exhibited internationally at galleries, institutions, biennials and fairs, including: 10th Edition of Whitstable Biennial, UK; Singapore Biennale 2019, SG; Bündner Kunstmuseum, Chur, CH; Berlin Espace Diaphanes, Berlin, DE; Manifesta 11, Zurich, CH; Whitechapel Gallery, London, UK; ICA, London, UK; Kunsthalle St.Gallen, CH; Eastside Projects, Birmingham, UK; Darling Foundation, Montreal, CA; Zabludowicz Collection, London, UK; Helmhaus Stadt Zürich, CH; Tenderpixel, London, UK; Block Universe, Performance Art Festival, London, UK; Helmhaus Museum, Zurich, CH; Turner Contemporary, Margate, UK; Modern Art Oxford, Oxford, UK; Kunsthalle Basel, Basel, CH; Istituto Svizzero Rome, IT; Haus der Kunst Uri, Altdorf, CH; LUX Artists’ Moving Image, London, UK; Art Hall Tallinn, Tallinn, EE; Last Tango, Zürich, CH; New York Art Book Fair, MoMA PS1, USA; Videotank, Zurich, CH; Cabinett in Kallio Kunsthalle, Helsinki, FI; Centre Culturel Suisse, Paris, FR; Mimosa House, London, UK; E-Werk Freiburg, Freiburg, DE; TOPIC, Geneva, CH; VITRINE, London, UK and Basel, UK; Espace Diaphanes Zürich, CH.
Residencies include: LUX, London, UK (2016); Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop, Edinburgh, UK (2015); Escalator program, Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridgeshire, UK (2011).
VITRINE presented a performance of Bachmann's at VITRINE Fitzrovia as part of Performance Exchange 2022.
Nadim Abbas, Nicole Bachmann, Edwin Burdis, Kara Chin, Anaïs Comer, Tim Etchells, Jamie Fitzpatrick, Ludovica Gioscia, Katrin Hanusch, Candice Jacobs, Sophie Jung, Rene Matić, Campbell McConnell, Paula Pinho Martins Nacif, Milly Peck, Sam Porritt, Ralph Pritchard, Natasha Rees, Bioni Samp, James Stopforth, and Charlie Godet Thomas.
