Bodien Britschgi

When I was eight years old, one of my primary teachers told my parents;

‘Whenever I look at Bodien, I see a little angel, staring outside the classroom

window, and wonder where she has wandered off this time again!’ The tendency to

wander mentally still shapes my artistic practice today. From building dreamlike

worlds, to filling my studio with self-portraits, I wander through topics like the

home, nostalgia, emotional landscapes, and belonging.

This wandering continues in the way I work. By weaving drawing, sculpture and

installations into enlarged fragments of the everyday, small moments, thoughts,

or feelings, I take the viewer by the hand and point at them with a magnifying

glass. These fragments function as auto fictional scenes, allowing my work to

move between lightness and heaviness, between something playful and

something quite serious. These contrasts create a space where humour and

discomfort can appear at the same time. Rather than daydreaming in my teacher’s

classroom, I use this wandering as a method within my practice, bringing the work

closer to a feeling, of searching, holding on, letting go, and sometimes just sitting

with it for a while.