Nicole Bachmann is a Swiss artist working across video, text, sound and performance. Her practice is grounded in writing which serves as the initial material for her performances and sculptures, reflecting her interest in utterance and performative text.
Largely based on feminist and emancipatory thought, Bachmann’s work thinks of the body as a place where meaning and knowledge are produced using voice and movement, to form an “embodied vocabulary” that creates narratives and stories away from dominant world concepts and beliefs. In becoming other-too, she questions the structures of social norms and inequalities through her own and others’ bodies and voices. This is inspired by Rosi Braidotti’s concept of how people as subjects are embodied and embedded in the world we are sharing through relational affectivities.
Her predominantly collaborative practice reflects this subversion, evoking a sense of togetherness and reciprocity. The artist searches for meaning away from the prescribed set of definitions that she considers language exists within. Activating the individual as well as the group, Bachmann investigates how to become bodies of social and political change.
Nicole Bachmann (b. 1973, Zurich, CH) works and lives between Zurich, CH and London, UK. She holds a Diploma in Fine Art from Zurich University of the Arts (2007) and an MFA in Fine Art from Goldsmiths, University of London (2010). Awards Include: Nominated for the Prix littéraire Bernard Heidsieck-Centre Pompidou 2022; Swiss Art Awards, shortlisted (2019); Freiraumstipendium, Zurich, CH (2018); Werkbeitrag, Stadt Zurich, winner (2015 & 2018); Art Prize 2008, Nationale Suisse (2008); Swiss Design Award (2003).
Bachmann has been exhibited internationally at galleries, institutions, biennials and fairs, including: 10th Edition of Whitstable Biennial, UK; Singapore Biennale 2019, SG; Bündner Kunstmuseum, Chur, CH; Performance Exchange, London (with VITRINE), 2022; Berlin Espace Diaphanes, Berlin, DE; Manifesta 11, Zurich, CH; Whitechapel Gall
Nicole Bachmann
she/her
Artist