The Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève is pleased to present a series of new works by Hannah Weinberger in a major solo exhibition. The Swiss artist is the winner of the 2018 Swiss Emerging Artist Prize of Societe Generale Private Banking Switzerland.

Collaboration and participation are the hallmarks of Hannah Weinberger’s artistic practice. Her works rely on the potential of sound and the characteristics of the spaces invested to foster collective gatherings or endow spectators with a performative role. This offers them a central role in the experience. The background noises caught red-handed, the atmospheric buzzes of social life, and the synthetic percussive rhythms generated by moving crowds often constitute the preface of Weinberger’s pieces. Her sound compositions streamline social cacophony into minimal soundtracks, free of dramatic crescendos, referential tempos, or algorithmic prowess.

Weinberger’s first sound creations involved many contributors. More recently, it is the visitors themselves who, by their very presence, contribute to the activation of her works. Behind the artist’s apparent economy of means and immaculate spaces lies a careful study of the spaces and complex technical devices. Her discreet interventions transform the exhibition space into a genuine experimental platform, allowing the public to shape its own environment: a tailor-made experience within a work in constant evolution.
As they enter the Centre’s spaces, the spectators, like musicians, activate and orchestrate the exhibition, which is titled we didn’t want to leave. In order to offer the visitor a unique and ephemeral immersive experience, the artist engaged in extensive technical research with experts to develop a mechanism that is barely perceptible, despite its complexity. Rather than offering the audience a journey with a final destination, Hannah Weinberger seeks to place it in a form of full awareness of the moment and the present space. we didn’t want to leave evokes this sound flow in movement, in the grip of everyone’s drift. Spectators can stop, observe, or simply let themselves be carried away by the waves they generate. The visitors’ movements and interactions will be the driving force of the project.

Hannah Weinberger is a Swiss artist born in 1988. She lives and works in Basel and holds a master’s degree in visual arts from the University of Fine Arts in Zurich. She has presented solo exhibitions at the Kunstverein Braunschweig; the Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe; the Schinkel Pavillon, Berlin; Kunstverein Harburger Bahnhof, Hamburg; Kunsthaus Bregenz; MIT List Center for Visual Arts, Cambridge, MA; FriArt, Fribourg; the Swiss Institute, New York; and the Kunsthalle Basel, among others. Her work has also been presented internationally at: Vleeshal Middleburg; Musée Espace Arlaud, Lausanne; Okayama Art Summit; Manifesta 11; Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Oslo; Migros Museum of Contemporary Art, Zurich; the Lyon Biennale; the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam; the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia; Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen; Kunstverein München, Munich; and Kunsthaus Glarus. Her work was awarded a Swiss Art Award in June 2019; she was also awarded the Georg and Josi Guggenheim Prize in 2016 and the first Swiss Emerging Artist Prize in 2018.

This exhibition is produced with the support of Societe Generale Private Banking Switzerland as main partner.