It really started off like most young people, when they really want to do something, your
parents tell you, no, you can't.
This is my friend, my friend, Irene.
I was born in Lucerne, in central Switzerland, and I was brought up here in a traditional
Jewish family, because my father was extremely suspicious of the art school in Lucerne.
Of course, that's all I wanted to do, was go to the Kunstschule, and I also was friendly
with the main teacher, who was a communist, who already didn't work well, terrible.
So my mother managed to negotiate that I was allowed to do a correspondence course in
commercial art, that was a compromise to start with.
So I was allowed to go to London, where I also studied graphics at the Polytechnic.
But then I fell in love with a Muslim. In England, I was immediately somehow able to
take part in quite a prestigious exhibition.
My first exhibition experience was actually at the Royal Society of Arts, and my parents
were very surprised, because after all I didn't go to art school, how come she gets to exhibit
in this.
After a year, I had to come back, and I thought, where could I come back to?
A, I wanted to get as far as possible from Lucerne, because I wasn't that happy in Lucerne.
So I looked on the map, and Geneva was the furthest.
So in Geneva, I actually continued with graphic art, but for my living, I was quite lucky.
I had a diploma in commercial skills, so I was able to work as a temporary secretary.
In the time in between, I was able to work as a graphic artist.
And there were also foreigners, so I felt quite comfortable, because other foreigners
were not a suspect.
But I felt the atmosphere was very, very dry and quite cold in Geneva.
And I started to realise that the only way I could work was if I worked at night and
slept in a day, but I had to share dicks with four other girls.
And the four other girls were all religious Jewish girls, it was strictly kosher.
So I began to work at night, because I felt either I'm talking and I'm sociable, or I
can work, I couldn't do both.
And after half a year of that, I thought, maybe this is not so good for my health.
And by chance, I met a young woman who said, you know, I am being treated at Professor
Mastro-Powler and his wonderful institution where they teach art therapy.
And she said, maybe that's something for you.
So I went there and I really liked it.
And I got my mother to influence my father to allow me to study there.
So I started there for three years.
And already I always made things, I made sculptures out of old bread and glass and stones and
things.
And they still have the collection there.
So I love making things that seem inanimate and make them into something alive.
And it gave me confidence because I realised also when I work with patients, very soon
I go to work with patients that may be being free and imaginative and open without actually
a lot of real knowledge, just using intuition and worked pretty well.
This is still from the first period of figurative work that I said, where this is called embrace,
very obvious.
After my diploma, I already have met my husband, the musician and violinist, Joseph Fröhlich,
and we decided we have to live in London, which suited me okay.
It was a long way away from Luzern.
And there I started first, I suddenly felt strange enough, being in London, the three-dimensional
was much more attractive than working in graphic art.
I suddenly felt in front of a zinc plate or flat piece of paper, I didn't have the inspiration
and I started again collecting things, started with working in clay, and soon enough had
some exhibitions.
We had children then, and the topic was very often pregnancy, love, couples.
Actually funny enough, very often I work like that, that I am portraying what I haven't
got yet.
So when I wanted to have a child, I made these pregnant torsos in wood, in teak.
This piece was called Tender Tension, which was again, you know, marriage, and I did a
lot of pieces to do with relationships.
I started it with an obsession into flexibility, because these guys, you see, still attached
to each other, whether they like it or not.
So I started to make this piece, which was called Transfigured Night.
These figures have a personality of their own, but they really work well when they're
together and when they do things together.
And I was very interested to try and see that there's not one clear dominance in the relationship.
There's a rapport and they can also get cross with each other, but they can also do tender
things, especially because now I was married and I had children and I felt there was maybe
this danger of being static, being cast in a particular role that you can't get out
of.
For me, this was always important, being able to have choices.
These are actually sculptures that gave me some recognition, because I had an exhibition
at the Swiss Embassy where they featured this.
So here you have the mother, which in my view is always got to be the most flexible character.
This one can also stand on her back or on her head.
So as in real life, you can see that women just have to be able to do anything.
So the father gets supported and the baby gets supported by the mother standing on her
head.
Obviously, you can see that I was very concerned about and interested in this fact.
I had a husband who was forever travelling, he was always on tours and that's when I made
bigger things, dusty things, you know, you can't be very presentable if you work.
I made a very large version, also which ended up in parks and gardens, so kids could actually
carry it and they could sit and crawl under the bed, sit on the mother and put the baby
where they wanted and I was very passionate about that.
It's just that I'm commercially not very able, so I wasn't able to have this spread
around the world in kindergartens, which is what I really would have wanted.
I think I have a funny little version.
I made this in very large, which is now in a school-enhanced.
It had a pulley here, this was called the giant rixon, except this one is a small version.
And I made it sometimes as wedding presents.
The important of course of the child, which was more and more a best, but you can also
hide the child, become a unity again.
Also from this time, stems, this is a model that the large piece of that is now standing
in Lugano.
This was still from this time, where there was, you know, very tactile unity.
And I did this actually when our children were that sort of age.
This charon was, I think, four, nineteen, six years old.
Just carry coloring in a bit far.
And this is the site we saw before we left here.
I offered the town the sculpture.
I'm the winter hour.
Ah, so?
Yes, but I live in the neighborhood and I just saw it.
And then I thought, no one else is going to clean it, I have to do it myself.
We're doing something like that already, right?
You know, someone gave me a photo of the street, and you said it was a little stupid again.
I was determined to make a dynamic sculpture, not the usual family where the kids are perhaps
held by the parents.
I wanted to do it the other way round.
My mother was so fond of this piece, too, because I made it still in London.
When I brought it here, I was expecting it gives me contact with local architects here,
which wasn't quite materializing, but we still enjoy it and you can see kids enjoy it and
grandmothers enjoy it.
And the transformation in bronze took place only a year ago when I decided to put it here
in memory of my mother, who loved this piece.
So I started making quite a lot of sculptures for gardens on order for people, and I loved
the challenge.
Somebody wanted two pieces, somehow to bridge the gap, and for me it was lovely, as long
as they left me free to do how I wanted to do it.
This obsession with flexibility carried on a bit, and then my father died.
I have by then made mainly things to do with love, motherhood, and tensions between people.
So I stopped, because I was lucky enough I could, most of my sculptural colleagues couldn't
afford to do that, but I stopped and started chattu, which means mainly Chinese medicine,
and understanding more about energy, and understanding more about things that are not visible.
And I did continue working, I worked less, and maybe sought a bit more.
You talked to me about chattu, how did it come, what made you choose to do that?
It wasn't the self-decision from one day to the next.
It started off by me feeling I had to do something meaningful where I was actually interacting
with other people as I like tactile interaction, I like touching, I like feeling things.
I was looking around for a way to hopefully, you know, cure people or myself with a message
that made sense.
So I looked at anything from homeopathy, and touch for health, and foot massage, and I
sort of did, first of all, introductory courses in eight different subjects, and suddenly
I realised chattu is for me, because it dealt with an understanding of an energy that you
can only feel you can't see it.
It allowed me to really develop a different side of myself, which is what was done.
So it was three years, it was quite a hard slog, because you also had to study of course
pathology and anatomy, but I could feel I was good at it, I could feel you had time
to tune in, and suddenly I had people under my hands, and I could feel things, I could
feel things.
And it was quite a revelation, you can also heal bits of yourself with it, and with it
I think I'm doing tight sheet.
Now we're just looking at the series which I kept rather quiet, and only showed once
in public before leaving for London.
I called it Visions of Ourselves, there were pieces which showed more, some problems in
life, public and private problems.
As for example here, this is a piece about the menopause, which is something we all
face sooner or later, where really we still feel beautiful like you will have seen in
the mirror, so the woman still feels like she was when she was young, but she has to
face the fact that things will not be quite the same.
The grass is greener, but it was also called Don't Break Up My Rainbow, because I realized
that the world is very much what we believe it to be and what we want it to be, it's not
always the reality.
We just see this hand, which is my hand, reaching up for this ominous apple, which is the truth,
and this is the Tree of Life, it was actually called the Tree of Life.
I always felt that it was good that Adam had a bite of this apple that gave him a knowledge
of good and evil and all the bits in between, but underneath here it's also got a huge eye,
obviously symbolic of the eye of God, so, and these eyelashes from here, from this eye
are also the flames that barred your way back into paradise.
This piece is entirely made of shoulder pads, and I felt it was actually problematic that
we needed to try and look like we are other than we are, and it has, she actually carries
her little poem.
I think this piece was called Heroes, or Former Heroes, and it is really about the
vergänglichkeit, about the non-eternally of heroes being on a stage, and you can see
in the reflection, this was obviously Caesar, with all his laurels being nicely dried up,
but in the end his fate is the same as everybody else's.
We were in the middle of a war again, in the Middle East, with all these efforts, which
I thought was a huge waste, obviously this is a waste pipe, and it just saddened me,
it was yet another topic I couldn't do nothing about.
I also started combining materials now, I started combining wood with bronze or other
things, a stone, and I loved the dialogue that may have come from Shiatsu, where you
are very much aware of the yin and yang of things, of the hollow and the full.
This piece, again, is not always what it seems, it can be changed, but I think this is really
where it starts, it is really where it starts.
But it is a person that is quite noted, and I suppose like with most artists you are pretty
autobiographical, you don't do other people's stuff.
These figures can go their own way, so you feel they kind of belong, but they may have
to still keep searching how do they belong, or if they really indeed want to.
After the statue of Shiatsu there was also just a more return to myself, as just an
individual rather than as a mother and a wife.
I was calling this hand of fate, this is simply made in terracotta, and you can see there
is a figure trapped inside this hand, and another one looking onto this face, not quite
sure where this face is looking.
There was another form of self-portrait, I call this, me and my dream, so this is me,
I suppose hugging myself in a little version.
It was a sort of time more of reflection.
I like very much that my art could be touched, and actually in some of the exhibitions I
required as a please touch, which didn't go down so well with the gallery.
So this lady can be like this, looking outward, or looking down at the earth, being open,
perhaps more vulnerable.
This piece is the beginning of a series which I call Strengths and Loneliness.
For once I did a man, which is a bit unusual for me, but the man was again probably me.
And you can see that he's not really touching, it's just the will.
I suppose this also came out from Shiazuka, you realise your strength doesn't come from
muscle really.
And he's somehow able to hold up this wall that could crush him.
At a certain point you decided to come to Lugano?
Yeah, we decided to come to Lugano in 2002.
I had several other phases, but when I came here there were two elements that really marked
my new work.
One was suddenly there was so much colour, a lot more colour than in London.
And I had only a small studio, not like in London.
I also found a part from being invaded with colour, I didn't know people, so I thought
I had to invent them.
And out of this was born a whole series called Magnetic Personalities.
What I was fascinated with was that you haven't just got a face, you've got a face that can
change and the unlooker can change.
The expression of a person totally changes depending on where the head is, on the shoulder.
And I just want the person to try a little bit, the head of the two animals, to play
and tell them what they think, what the head thinks.
Not what they think, what they think the head thinks.
What do you think of each other now?
Maybe she says something and then she feels what she says, what she says again.
Exactly.
Now I can imagine that the two of them could understand each other.
What are you saying?
Body language.
Body language, exactly.
What do you think of each other now?
What do you think of each other now?
You think, yes, we two had a nice life until now.
Until now?
Yes.
And so it will be the next 30 years.
Is it good?
Yes, it's good.
It's a bear.
A self-made bear.
On the other hand, if it's with them, I would be with them.
Now we're going to come to Kasper and Zeppelin.
Aha.
Yes, to the tip of the tip.
Okay.
Okay.
Yes.
And now?
A little bit of patience.
Mm-hmm.
And then you can say a few things.
Maybe we'll meet again.
Oh, yes.
These are called Jaesagers und Zweifel.
I mean, it would be translated as yes, say yes, and doubters.
So newly married.
They are newly married.
This reminds me of a time when I made puppets, of course, for my children.
And I made puppets here too.
Because I like storytelling, obviously.
She is very haughty.
She feels she ought to be made of an orchid or something.
But I've got a professor.
I've got him, Dr. Gonzalez.
So I don't know whether they're married or not, not sure.
I made this so that you can actually change who is facing where.
And whether it's a happier face or the frightened face is up.
They can't move very much except around themselves.
But it was a different sort of yes, say, if you tap this peaceful looking woman,
strongly enough on her forehead, she will suddenly open her eyes and go rather green.
Now this one is a Hasidic couple.
And I was always interested actually for some reason the woman ends up on top.
And do you wonder why?
They have a balance, which is clearly in her favor.
A couple who obviously need each other for their precarious balance,
they're never going to get any closer.
But they'll always stay together.
She was my last carving.
Why did you stop?
Because my hands, my arms can't do it anymore.
But I need help every time I take a chair.
That's when I started doing all the technique.
Where I'll end up, well, I think only God really knows.
I've sat upon the setting sun.
But never, never, never, never, I never wanted water once.
Never, never, never, never.
I listen to my words but they fall far below.
I let my music take me where my heart wants to go.
I'll swim upon the devil's lake.
But never, never, never, never.
I'll never make the same mistake.
Never, never, never, never.
