The 2022 Kiefer Hablitzel | Göhner Art Prize was awarded to the Geneva-based artist Camille Kaiser. The art prize includes a solo exhibition with publication at the Aargauer Kunsthaus. For this show, the artist examines events at the time of Algeria’s independence. She approaches them from the perspective of “grand gestures” and “small gestures” in order to question decolonization and its missing images. 

Camille Kaiser: small gestures, grand gestures 
Kiefer Hablitzel | Göhner Art Prize 2022
1 April – 29 May, 2023
Aargauer Kunsthaus, Aargau

In the context of the current debate on the restitution of cultural artefacts taken by colonial powers, Camille Kaiser delves into another history of decolonization – the transfer of numerous public monuments from Algeria to France shortly after the War of Independence. After July 1962, bronze statues of Joan of Arc and the Duke of Orléans, weighing several tons, sailed across the Mediterranean in the direction of France. At the same time, Camille Kaiser’s grandfather worked in Algeria and wrote a postcard to her grandmother on the difficulties of shipping personal property from Algiers to Marseille. 

Images from a French military archive and the correspondence between Camille Kaiser’s Algerian-Swiss grandparents form the basis of her video installations, texts, as well as print works, in which the artist explores the confrontation and significance of both monumental and everyday objects. They tell a story of colonial entanglements from a personal perspective. Ultimately, the stories intertwine to make room for fiction. 

Camille Kaiser (1992, CH-FR) is an artist based in Geneva, Switzerland. Her research and work are concerned with state/institutional archives in relation to intimate/family archives related to the colonial history of Switzerland, France and Algeria. Her installations incorporate film, text and prints using fiction as an artistic and political strategy to redirect attention. She has exhibited at the Centre d’art contemporain de Genève, at the Centre d’art de Neuchâtel, at the Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen, among others. 

Solo exhibition at the Aargauer Kunsthaus
The special prize for Camille Kaiser consists of a solo exhibition at the Aargauer Kunsthaus from 1 April to 29 May 2023. A monography will be published on the occasion of the exhibition by Verlag fi.ir moderne Kunst in Vienna, with contributions from Dr. Celine Eidenbenz, curator of the exhibition, as well as Lydia Amarouche and Olivia Alexandra Fahmy.

Kiefer Hablitzel │ Göhner Art Prize
The Kiefer Hablitzel │Göhner Art Prize is open to Swiss or Switzerland-based artists under 30 years of age. The Prize is awarded in close cooperation with the Swiss Federal Office of Culture and the Ernst Göhner Foundation. In addition to a maximum of seven prizes of CHF 15 000 each, as a special award, a solo exhibition is organized at a Swiss institution for one artist, accompanied by a publication. This solo exhibition takes place in the year following the award of the prize. It was first held in 2022 at the Kunsthaus Fri Art in Fribourg and in 2023 it will take place at the Aargauer Kunsthaus.
      

Photo: Zoe Tempest