Reflections of the fragmentary nature of human identity.

Brigitte Lustenberger was born in Zurich, Switzerland, where she also studied and received her MA in Social and Photo History. In the following years she established herself as a fine art photographer, moved to New York and received her MFA in Fine Art Photography and Related Media at Parsons The New School of Design. The artist creates in her photographs a modern though baroques universe. Gazes, gestures, objects and the distribution of light give subtle hints about the photographed person’s mood and life story, and more generally, about the transitoriness of our being and the constant human involvement in it – and its resulting changes of fates. The artist goes back to the meaning of the word Portrait which descends from the latin protahere which can be translated as to pull out something, to bring something to light. The black spaces from where the faces appear leave room for the viewer’s interpretation. All the lighting is natural daylight coming in through a window.

Gigga Hug domiciled in Berne, graduated as high school teacher focusing on artistic work. Following that path she acquired a diploma in art education and cultural mediation. By looking at her black&white photographs we immerse in a thoughtful silence. In the vanishing lights of the early evening hours the artist took pictures of moonlight pale dolls, collected throughout many years. In the artist’s imagery they are not intended for playing or warming up one’s soul, but reflections of the fragmentary nature of human identity. Duplications of the dolls through mirrors connote a deceptive togetherness, but the surrounding darkness in which silence seems to resound intensifies the loneliness embracing the figures. In the series, “Poupée Dessin”, the artist examines the perception of corporeality. The manipulated photographs are newly “read” through the pen and ink drawings and the body’s topography is defined afresh. With her series “Skotom”, the artist addresses the perception of aliens seen from the Swiss point of view. To hold one`s ground socially and professionally in a foreign culture, to become perceptible, is a long lasting and arduous process.

Born and raised in Switzerland Cornelia Hediger move to the US where she put down roots, received a Masters of Fine Art at Rutgers University and now lives and works in New York. The Doppelgänger series of photographs are pictorial narratives that explore internal human emotions, the (sub) conscious mind, the (alter)ego. The narrative structure is based upon the concept of the Doppelgänger – as understood within Germanic literature – as a ghostly double or apparition of a living person, widely assumed to be sinister and a harbinger of bad luck, but also highly ambiguous, thus presenting a psychological dilemma. The central characters are enacted by the artist herself within claustrophobic and timeless spaces. The OHNMACHT series is a continuation in self-portraiture, a project that she has been working on over the past two years, a photographic narrative of a character undergoing a surreal, fantastic and dreamlike journey.