Event
Water, more than any other element, intricately connects human beings to the world around them - from the vast oceans encircling us to the water constituting the majority of our bodies. Beginning with bodies of water, artist Lena Maria Thüring’s video work, Liquid Connections, delves into the narratives of life on earth flowing through sea, river, salt, cytoplasm, deep time, life cycles, and multispecies thinking, all expressed in dense and poetic expression. The video narrative weaves together excerpts from various earth science and climate change studies, as well as fictional literary narratives from authors such as Octavia Butler, Ursula K. Le Guin, Donna Haraway, Astrida Neimanis, and others. Thuring’s prose-poem itself resembles a body of water, oozing, dripping and flowing, narrating a porous and palimpsestic story. Such poetry unfolds with the rhythmic cadence of pop songs and rap, as the boundaries of the bodies soften, becoming moist and blurred within the cycles and circulations.
In Down the River, Thüring depicts the historical injustice in witch hunts, drawing inspiration from the Bergell witch trials of the 17th century. Through this exploration, she portrays a mysterious ceremony by the river Maira. The turbulent waters of the river intertwine with the liquids poured into various laboratory vessels, evoking the imagery of plant magic and alchemy. This contemporary reinterpretation also underscores the reclamation of herbal knowledge once viewed as dangerous, now celebrated within a "modern witch lab" at Soglio-Produkte AG, a skin and body care company. Down the River further confronts modern anxieties by embracing nature and traditional wisdom amidst technological uncertainty and environmental crises. Additionally, it champions feminist reappropriation, presenting "difficult women" as inspirational figures and reimagining such characters as radical seekers of knowledge.
At the event, Becoming Water, Embodying River, the two aforementioned video works will be presented, and artist Lena Maria Thüring will share the concept and process behind the artwork. Writer and scholar WANG Yanran will join for a conversation, engaging in a discussion on the aesthetics of water, intersectionality, and Feminist Phenomenology for posthuman worlds.
Lena Maria Thüring (born in 1981 in Basel, based in Basel and Zurich, Switzerland) completed her photography studies in 2007 and earned a Master of Arts in Fine Arts from the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK) in 2014. From 2014 to 2017, she served as a jury member of the Audiovision and Multimedia specialist committee in the cantons of Basel-Stadt and Basel-Landschaft, Switzerland.
Since 2014, Thüring has been a lecturer at the Institute of Art, Gender, and Nature at the Academy of Art and Design FHNW in Basel. In 2020, she co-founded the production company ROSA WOLF GmbH with curator Alice Wilke. The company focuses on the conception, development, organization, production, manufacturing, and mediation of new art and exhibition projects in Basel.
Through spoken language, storytelling, and various artistic mediums such as video, sound, photography, performance, and installation, Thüring delves into the processes of history production and topics related to linguistic articulation, collective and personal memories, social structures, gender, and identity. Her artistic work involves a research-based process that often begins with extensive conversations, serving as a foundation for the development of narratives, which are then fragmented, reassembled, and fictionalized. She enjoys blending elements from scientific sources, speculative literature, and pop culture with personal stories resulting in multimedia pieces.
Lena Maria Thüring's works have been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions in museums and institutions, including solo exhibitions at the Centre culturel Suisse in Paris, Haus Konstruktiv in Zurich, Kunsthaus Baselland, Museum für Gegenwartskunst Basel, and group exhibitions and screenings at Kunsthalle Basel, House of World Cultures in Berlin, National Museum Reina Sofia in Madrid, and Palais de Tokyo in Paris. She has received various awards and grants, including the Swiss Art Award (2008), grants from the Canton of Zurich (2008, 2009, 2012), Kiefer Hablitzel Foundation Prize (2009, 2011), grants from the City of Zurich (2011, 2016), Manor Art Prize Basel (2013), Kunstkredit Basel-Stadt Grant (2018), City of Zurich Work Year (2019), Pro Helvetia Grant (2020), Landis and Gyr Foundation Grant (2022), and a public art project at the Swiss Embassy in Seoul (2018). The artist has also participated in residency programs in Paris (2009) and New York (2010).
Wang Yanran is currently based in Shanghai, where she actively engages as a researcher, writer and poet.She has studied in Paris and Shanghai, and is now a doctoral candidate in Philosophy of Art at Fudan University. Her recent research interests span feminist philosophy of technology, environmental humanities, and philosophies of care, with a particular focus on how entanglement manifests as a form of posthuman intimate relationship within contemporary toxic politics.
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