Artistic practice
RELAX’ artistic practice and exhibition activities include projects in public spheres, personal and group shows, lectures and performances at Swiss and international art institutions.
In 1983, collaborative works started at Gyrophare, a squat [9] in a former factory in northern Paris that was transformed by artists and neighbourhood residents into an artist studio house, an event space, and a community center.
During the first ten years, the artists developed a critical approach to the production of art objects, using interdisciplinarity to develop mostly site-specific art. They have developed an artistic practice based on contextualization, intervention and infiltration. Their practice is dedicated to concerns including feminism and feminist art history, the canon in art history, critical masculinity, social hierarchizations, access and affiliation in society.
From 1985 to 2002 Chiarenza & Hauser pursued their collective projects in artist studios of the city of Biel-Bienne, since 2003 RELAX are based in Zurich.
For their research and projects they have completed numerous fellowships and artist-in-residence programs, mainly in Western and Eastern Europe, North and Latin America.
In 1994 they realized Thank You, a collaborative and interactive installation at Capp Street Project (CSP) [10] in San Francisco, on issues about art and money, using a coffee bar, video and audio interviews. CSP is now run by the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts.
In June 2000 RELAX represented Switzerland at the Venice Biennale of Architecture, in Less Esthetics more Ethics, [11] a group exhibition organized by the Federal Office of Culture. [12]
In 2004 RELAX realised a permanent work at the Headquarters of the United Nations in New York City, under the title INLAY consisting of "a set of renovated rooms forming the backstage of the General Assembly." according to the Metropolis magazine. [13] The Inlays consisted of the word peace in the six official languages of the UN (Arabic, Chinese, French, English, Russian and Spanish) are placed on various surfaces in 12 places within the overall space and its furnishings. The materials used for the inlays, which are no longer than an inch, are diamonds, gold, white gold, tantalum and exotic woods. Use of such precious materials is meant to provoke thought about the real value of peace and how costly it can be. This message is directly aimed at those in power who will speak in front of the General Assembly“. [14] [15]
In 2006 the Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein describes the neon sign WHO PAYS?, which is part of the museum collection, elaborating that "the critical analysis of the significance of economic values and the status of art and its players is formative of the work of the artist group RELAX". [16]
The culture of economy is a constant in RELAX works, as the curators of the 2009 Festival of the Free Slow University of Warsaw mention: "RELAX Studios is concentrated on the ties between artistic production and economic and political social structures. They are renowned as creators of conceptual interventions in public spaces, interferences in office buildings, company and organisation seats". [17]
Through video essays with activist and political philosopher Silvia Federici and with feminist economist and expert on care work Mascha Madörin from 2014 to 2017, RELAX have addressed concerns such as: the stigmatization and displacement of women from public life during the transition from the Middle Ages to early capitalism; the dispossession of rural people forced into wage labor; furthermore, the contemporary absence of domestic, nurturing, and care work in the representation of contemporary economic balances. These works were shown in installations within thematic exhibitions at the Museo Arte Gallarate, Kunstmuseum Luzern, Helmhaus [18] Zurich and Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein as well as in a workshop with Mascha Madörin and in a guest_*talk between Silvia Federici and Mascha Madörin in collaboration with the F+F School of Art and Design. [19]
In 2018, the Collection of Prints and Drawings at ETH Zurich [20] commissioned RELAX to take a closer look at the works in the collection, their location, and how the collection has been built up over the past 151 years. The result was an exhibition titled what do we want to keep? that sheds a whole new light on the works on display in the collection, focusing on representations of women engaged in paid work, representations of (mostly) female artists, addressing issues of the gaze in art and canonizing processes and their influence on the economic value of art [21] Central to this exhibition, is the video ongoing research [22] [23] , in which the artists paid homage to Linda Nochlin, referencing her famous 1971 essay "Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?". [24]
