Christoph Büchel

Christoph Büchel (born 1966) is a Swiss artist known for provocative contemporary installations.[1] He received international attention for constructing a mosque in a Venice church and suggesting that prototypes for Donald Trump's wall should be considered land art.[2]

Early life and education

Christoph Büchel was born in Basel, Switzerland, in 1966.[3]

Dispute with Mass MoCA

Since early 2007, Büchel has been ensconced in a legal dispute with the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (commonly known as "Mass MoCA"). The museum had agreed to take on Büchel's massive project, "Training Ground for Democracy," only to balk at certain costs associated with some of the planned installations. The museum, which had already invested significantly in the exhibit, won permission in court to open it to the public without the consent of Büchel, who claims to do so would misrepresent his work. Mass MoCA's Director, Joe Thompson, decided to dismantle it instead without opening it to the public.[4]

Selected works
The Abbazia della Misericordia transformed into mosquee

For the 2015 Venice Biennale, Christoph Büchel contributed Iceland's national pavilion which consisted of a conceptual work of art which transformed the 10th-century old Church of the Abbey of Misericordia into a generic mosque.[5] Labeled The Mosque: The First Mosque in the Historic City of Venice, it was partly inspired by disputes in Iceland over building the first purpose-built Reykjavík Mosque.[3][6] After a complaint presented by a member of the neo-fascist party New Force, the Venetian authorities closed the installation, citing permit violations.[7][3]

Büchel encouraged artistic recognition of eight prototypes of the border wall erected near the US-Mexico border. Büchel mobilized support through an online petition. [2]

For the 2019 Venice Biennale, Büchel displayed Barca Nostra, a shipwreck that had sunk with hundreds of migrants aboard.[8]

References
  1. Thomas, Skye Arundhati. "How the Venice Biennale reveals problems with nationalist art patronage". The Caravan. Retrieved 2019-12-07.
  2. Walker, Michael (3 January 2018). "Is Donald Trump, Wall-Builder-in-Chief, a Conceptual Artist?". New York Times. New York. Retrieved 3 January 2018.
  3. York Underwood, 'Life Imitating Art: Iceland’s “Mosque” Installation In Venice', The Reykjavík Grapevine (June 6, 2015), https://grapevine.is/mag/articles/2015/06/06/life-imitating-art-icelands-mosque-installation-in-venice/.
  4. Smith, Roberta (16 September 2007). "Is It Art Yet? And Who Decides?". The New York Times.
  5. Archived at Ghostarchive and the Wayback Machine: Christoph Büchel: The Mosque. Icelandic Pavilion at Venice Art Biennale 2015. YouTube.
  6. Kennedy, Randy (22 May 2015). "Police Shut Down Mosque Installation at Venice Biennale". The New York Times.
  7. "Art Censorship in Response to Speculative Threats". 17 June 2015.
  8. Pes, Javier; Rea, Naomi (May 16, 2019). "'Absolutely Vile' or 'Powerful'? Christoph Buchel's Migrant Boat Is the Most Divisive Work at the Venice Biennale". Artnet News. Retrieved December 31, 2019.
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