Curated by Valentina Locatelli
https://debernardi.ch/
https://laurasanchezfilomeno.ultra-book.com
https://www.mantscheva.ch/
The exhibition The Herbarium of Memory: Laura De Bernardi, Gergana Mantscheva, Laura Sánchez Filomeno presents paintings, drawings, objects and installations by three Swiss and international women artists whose artistic practices are united by a deeply introspective approach to personal and collective identity. Employing real seeds and dried plant specimens as well as embroidered, hand-stitched or painted plants and rhizomes, each one of these artists engages with the concept and epistemological meaning of the ‘herbarium’ to offer three different yet complementary artistic statements about life and memory.
On the occasion of the exhibition The Herbarium of Memory at Espace Muraille, the works by Laura De Bernardi, Gergana Mantscheva and Laura Sánchez Filomeno are presented as if they were heterogeneous specimens borrowed from different herbaria for the purpose of comparing and investigating three geographically and culturally distinct yet related botanical collections.
Exhibited on both levels of the 18th century building that hosts Espace Muraille, their physical proximity allows the viewer to study and experience them individually as well as in dialogue with one another and with the historic substance of the gallery, which on the occasion of the exhibition is symbolically transformed into an archive-like space. This dynamic activates a stimulating comparative approach and also generates inspiring new insights into the unique practices of the three artists. What are the characteristics which are intrinsic to each of the artworks exhibited and their creators? Is there a common thread in the work and research of these three artists despite their different original contexts and backgrounds? How do they integrate (or exploit) a realistic or symbolic representation of nature into their poetic discourse? Beyond the visible stylistic and material qualities that differentiate their individual approach to the investigation of nature as their primary source of inspiration, the works by De Bernardi, Mantscheva and Sánchez Filomeno can be interpreted all together as a powerful visual atlas of emotional memories, both personal and collective.
Using different artistic approaches and techniques – from traditional oil and acrylic painting to embroideries and ephemeral installations of textile and non-textile elements such as seeds and pollens – these three artists have created their own impressive collections of ‘herbaria’, from which unfolds their profound research on gestuality on one side, and cultural roots and memory on the other side. Through a delicate yet provocative visual vocabulary, they thematize complex questions of identity rooted in a reflection that spans gender and geography, history and politics, autobiographical references and the inclusion of different representations of otherness.
Laura De Bernardi
Born in 1970 in Minusio, Switzerland. Lives and works in Minusio.
A graduate of the Cantonal School of Art of Lugano (CSIA), Laura De Bernardi holds a degree in painting from the Brera Academy in Milan, where she studied with Luciano Fabro and Tommaso Trini. De Bernardi’s artistic practice is based on a painstaking and almost encyclopaedic research into the diversity and multiplicity of life forms and their patterns of growth. Intrigued by the interaction of natural and artificial materials, by the alternation of fullness and emptiness as well as by the practice of accumulation and rearrangement, she investigates the world through an endless process of stitching and sewing, collecting specimens and making drawings and annotations in her precious miniature notebooks. Over the years, De Bernardi has alternated frequent research stays abroad – such as at the Spazio Visarte in Paris (2002), Brazil (2001) and Addis Ababa (2003/04) – with a prolific exhibition activity in Italy, France and Switzerland. Among her numerous solo and group exhibitions, the following are especially worth mentioning: her participation in the Anteprima della XIV Quadrenniale di Arte di Roma 2003-2005 (Turin, 2003) and Open Studio at the Fondazione Arthur Cravan (Milan, 2010), which highlights her interest in the work of art collectives. In 2024, she presented her large format and site-specific installation Raccolta at the Swiss federal museum Vincenzo Vela in Ligornetto, Switzerland.
Gergana Mantscheva
Born in 1975 in Sofia, Bulgaria. Lives and works in Lüsslingen (Solothurn), Switzerland.
Gergana Mantscheva studied painting at the National Academy of Art in Sofia (1994–2000). Her paintings and drawings are characterized by a form of realism that is unmistakably influenced by her youth and formative years spent in socialist Bulgaria. Profoundly attracted to the images of the country that she left behind when she moved to Switzerland at the end of the 1990s, she has been drawing on this visual vocabulary ever since, elaborating on it time and again from her acquired geographical and historical distance. Her paintings are the result of a cathartic process that allows her to come to terms both with the political history of Bulgaria as well as with her feelings for, and memories of, a bygone time and people. Mantscheva’s works have been exhibited in numerous group shows in Switzerland, Greece and Germany. She has been awarded the Rentsch Foundation (2010), the Regiobank Solothurn (2016) and the Canton Solothurn (2023) encouragement prizes for art and painting. In 2024, she had her first major solo show in a Swiss museum (All Over, Kunsthaus Grenchen).
Laura Sánchez Filomeno
Born in 1975, in Lima, Peru. Lives and works in Cachan, France.
Laura Sánchez Filomeno holds a degree in painting from the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru in Lima, a DNSEP (Diplôme National Supérieur d’Expression Plastique, with a specialisation in Art) from the École supérieure des beaux-arts in Mans, as well as a doctorate in Plastic Arts and Art Sciences from the Panthéon-Sorbonne University in Paris. Her artistic work revolves around the practice of embroidery, a technique which she has learnt as an autodidact and turned into her own personal signature style to address questions related to nature and its exploitation or preservation, gender and femininity, as well as the opposing forces of attraction and repulsion. Awarded with numerous international prizes and recognitions such as the Mention and Acquisition Prize ASM (Association Selectiva Moda) at the Contextile Biennial in Portugal (2016), she also took part in the Détissages festival as a guest artist at Maison Tadashi Kawamata in St-Thélo, France (2017). In France, Sánchez Filomeno can look back on numerous solo and group exhibitions, for instance Compendium Naturae, at the Centre d’Art Ile Moulinsart, Fillé sur Sarthe (2019) and Symbiosium Cosmogonies Spéculatives, at the Fondation Fiminco in Romainville (2023). In 2024, she had her latest major solo exhibition at the Orangerie de Cachan (Taxinomie) and her embroideries were also included in the group show Une brève histoire de fils at the Maison de l’Amérique Latine in Paris.
Photo by Florencia Blanco Sanchez