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The Art Genève art fair is a very important second event of the year for Switzerland alongside the major Art Basel in June. Many up-and-coming Swiss galleries take part in Art Genève in order to gain access to the larger platforms. At the same time, market giants such as Hauser & Wirth, Templon and Galerie Eva Presenhuber are also present.
Mobiliar, one of the largest Swiss insurance companies, presents its Prix Mobilière at the fair. The prize is awarded to a promising, ambitious artist.
As both the fair and the Prix Mobilière are intended to be a springboard, in this article I am focusing entirely on the winner of this year's Prix Mobilière: Alfatih. (You can read more information here.)
MASI Lugano, alfatih, switzerland, 2024, moving image, 21 min, color, two-channel sound, courtesy of the artist
If it is even possible to characterize such a thing as distance, then Alfatih certainly represents a remarkably elusive figure in the Swiss media art scene, or in any other "scene" for that matter. Biographical information and artist statements are kept deliberately sparse, a sweet but stubborn refusal that reflects his attitude to contemporary digital technology.
Emerging from - or dissolving into - seemingly mundane environments and props of trivial life, Alfatih's works lead us to characters we consider pre-verbal, human figures in an early stage of both freedom and dependency. Leaving viewers between double mirrors or at the helm of household appliances that symbolize a civilization of control, Alfatih places one in an ambivalent state towards these potentially innocent beings. We find ourselves both in a position of exercising said control and submitting to the first tides of a narrative without a visible human author.
A Day in the Life, a commissioned CGI animated film depicting a day in the life of an "adult baby", represented Alfatih's first US solo exhibition at the Swiss Institute in New York in 2023. In it unfolds a 24-hour narrative written by AI, controlled by input from the artist and set to music by musician and theorist Tapiwa Svosve. As the day passes and the baby performs adult rituals marked by timestamps, seemingly seeking the approval of its clocks, the quiet melancholy of a lonely, repetitive life seeps quietly through the fabric of time and language.
In A Way Out of Time (2024), shown as part of the Biennale de l'Image en Mouvement 2024 at the Centre d'art contemporain in Geneva, visitors take control of a Victorian baby carriage and, it is implied, the infant it is supposedly carrying. Movement across the gallery floor and institutional landscape, however, only activates a real-time AI narrative, a ChatGPT-assisted 'dérive' through a bleak, AI-generated landscape. While ritual movement is imposed on the machine, viewers push the AI offspring, helping it to "fill the void with artificial memories" (Alice Bucknell in Mousse, February 2024).
Text source: alfatih.world
Prix Mobilière 2025, alfatih, photo credit: Thea Giglio
The unpublished video "switzerland" by artist alfatih (*1995) is configured as a collection of views of Swiss landscapes taken through the window of a moving train. Shot in several shades of the neutral color grey, the passing landscapes conceal both historical references and quotes from contemporary pop culture. With a sideways glance at tourism advertising and the long tradition of Swiss painting, the video questions how the term "Swiss panorama" creates a collective imagination.
The commissioned work for the Masi Collection was conceived by the artist for the LED wall in the entrance hall of the LAC cultural center. The video consists of several independent episodes and can be viewed in full length at set times. Over the course of the day, each episode is continuously integrated into the institutional communication on the projection screen, which is formally designed for this purpose. The work is positioned halfway between the public and museum exhibition spaces and appears like a hacker intervention. The work thus follows a recurring working method in this artist's production.
Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève for "Biennale de l'image et mouvement" 2024, alfatih, A Way out of Time, 2024, moving images
Alfatih won the prestigious Pax Art Award in 2024. The resulting work will be presented at Haus der elektronischen Künste from February 14. (Read more here)
