Bignia Wehrli

Bignia Wehrli

Germany

 

Bignia’s artistic practice deals with processes of visualization and with methods of capturing fleeting actions. Daily paths, distances traveled, faraway journeys, the shifting horizon, the distance between two points—these are sites of discovery. She is interested particularly in devising methods of notation and inventing devices, which can be used to record ephemeral occurrences and performative actions, positioning them in new contexts and relationships. She is fascinated by processes of translation and transformation, and she sees them as doorways between signification and reality. Through such processes, something—an act, a space, an idea—is transferred into uncharted territory, and imagination. Often the artwork seems to be only the remains of something else, a cryptic trace, a sign or a hint of something real hidden within.

Sternenschrift

Starlight on 35 mm film, inkjet print on Hahnemühle paper; Framed

167 × 111 cm × 7, 41 × 27 cm × 2

2014

 

Sternenschrift shows seven paths travelled by my father in late summer 2012 over the course of his workdays making hay in Sternenberg, Switzerland as recorded by a GPS device. In the winter of 2014, using a camera and a special developed instrument—the star pencil—I traced these paths with the light of a star. Using long exposure, the tracks of the star imprinted themselves on the film negative. Connecting the walking paths with the distant stars, this work transcribes the silent bond between father and daughter.

 

Sternenschrift

Starlight on 35 mm film, inkjet print on Hahnemühle paper; Framed

167 × 111 cm × 7, 41 × 27 cm × 2

2014

 

Sternenschrift shows seven paths travelled by my father in late summer 2012 over the course of his workdays making hay in Sternenberg, Switzerland as recorded by a GPS device. In the winter of 2014, using a camera and a special developed instrument—the star pencil—I traced these paths with the light of a star. Using long exposure, the tracks of the star imprinted themselves on the film negative. Connecting the walking paths with the distant stars, this work transcribes the silent bond between father and daughter.

 

Sternenschrift

Starlight on 35 mm film, inkjet print on Hahnemühle paper; Framed

167 × 111 cm × 7, 41 × 27 cm × 2

2014

 

Sternenschrift shows seven paths travelled by my father in late summer 2012 over the course of his workdays making hay in Sternenberg, Switzerland as recorded by a GPS device. In the winter of 2014, using a camera and a special developed instrument—the star pencil—I traced these paths with the light of a star. Using long exposure, the tracks of the star imprinted themselves on the film negative. Connecting the walking paths with the distant stars, this work transcribes the silent bond between father and daughter.

 

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