Racing heart, shortness of breath, loss of appetite, weakness and mental confusion: this is how Swiss physicians in the 17th century described a mysterious condition that afflicted soldiers far from home. Morbus Helveticus – the Swiss disease. A medical diagnosis for a feeling that, in this context, received its first name: homesickness.
Today, homesickness is no longer classified as an illness, yet the concept remains formative. It names the painful longing for a place and simultaneously suggests that Heimat itself can become a site of unease, that one can fall ill precisely where one is presumed to belong. The term "Heimat" has long been shaped by nationalist and exclusionary ideas, tied to landscape, nation and purity, and sustained through boundaries. And yet it encompasses experiences that reach far beyond such narrow definitions.
Heimat may take root in a landscape, in a mountain, a house, a smell, in the imprint of topographic familiarity. It emerges equally through relationships: through language, care, shared memories and the feeling of being seen. And at times it begins or ends in the body itself: in moments when the body is a place of belonging, or in periods when illness, migration, transition or gendered norms render it unfamiliar. Bodies can be shelters or sites of loss; they store history, injury and resistance.
Heimat can be lost, shifted, fractured or remade. One may arrive and remain a stranger or leave and stay connected.
The artists in this exhibition explore this fragile, ambivalent terrain. With empathy, acuity and formal precision, they trace how belonging comes into being, how it falters, and which new forms of home become visible through memory, material and ritual.
This year, the following artists are being shown at Kunsthalle Bern:
Tania Al Farouki, Nasrin Amiri Ramsheh, Livio Casanova, Chun Chen, Carla Blanca Corminboeuf, Rhoda Davids Abel, Beth Dillon, Garance Finger, Christina Gähler, Guadalupe Ruiz, Margaux Huber, Anna Jaun, Lorena Lira, cassiane c. pfund, Andrea Cindy Raemy, Michal Florence Schorro, Anouk Sebald, Ruven Joas Stettler
Cantonale Berne Jura is an association of eleven exhibition institutions that present the artistic output of the cantons of Bern and Jura in a joint annual exhibition. The cross-cantonal exhibition has been held annually since 2011 and has been organized and supported by the Cantonale association since 2012.
Kunsthalle Bern Jury:
Claudia Heim (Curator of the exhibition, Kunsthalle Bern)
iLiana Fokianaki (Director, Kunsthalle Bern)
Larissa Platz (Curator and researcher)
