Home is a Foreign Place – Sandra Knecht

“The artist Sandra Knecht defies categorization. No number of labels can do her justice. Her project at the Kulturstiftung Basel H. Geiger | KBH.G is proof of this. Home Is a Foreign Place is not merely an art exhibition; it’s a ‘Gesamtkunstwerk’, a total work of art that incorporates various media and engages the senses.” — Raphael Suter, Director Kulturstiftung Basel H. Geiger | KBH.G

Exhibition Notes:

The exhibition Home Is a Foreign Place at the Kulturstiftung Basel H. Geiger | KBH.G addresses the concept of home in various ways – as a feeling, a place, and an idea. It questions how our understanding of home evolves and how deeply it impacts human existence. This exhibition is the result of ten years of intense research and artistic work, in which Knecht has consistently pursued her examination of themes like home, identity, and diversity. Home Is a Foreign Place represents the concentrated culmination of Sandra Knecht’s practice and is her most extensive solo exhibition to date.

Sandra Knecht, studio view, Berlin 2023. Photo: Tina Sturzenegger

Sandra Knecht’s personal path to art, like her work, is unconventional. In 2011, she began studying visual art after spending over two decades working as a social worker. Her profession often brought her into the kitchens of the families she worked with, where they cooked together, exchanging culinary traditions and building bridges. These experiences continue to nourish her artistic practice. Knecht’s research is always long-term and materializes itself in various formats: installation, archive, photography, poetry, video, sound, performance, sculpture, and culinary art.

A significant aspect of Sandra Knecht’s oeuvre is the culinary performance, where she creates more than just dishes – she crafts performative artworks as social sculptures. For Home Is a Foreign Place, Knecht has composed a total of 32 flavor profiles. These intimate portraits are each dedicated to a female artist who has challenged her in her thinking and in her view of the world, as well as her own position within it. In doing so, these artists’ works, or certain aspects of them, became Sandra’s home.

Sandra Knecht, TSCHINN, 2023. Courtesy the artist.

For example, the flavor profile for Nan Goldin: a sugar cube, infused with 20 drops of homemade and self-concocted bitter schnaps. Other artists include Patti Smith, Virginie Despentes, PJ Harvey, Etel Adnan, and Ana Mendieta. Knecht’s vision behind choosing these artists was that they would all sit together at one table, engaging in conversation as they consumed the dishes. The flavor profiles are presented as recipe posters in the exhibition’s accompanying book. These custom recipes become a “work within the work,” reflecting Knecht’s artistic essence and embodying the complex relationship between art, identity, memory, and humor.

Home Is a Foreign Place invites us to search for the unknown within ourselves. For Sandra Knecht, food is a boundary-crossing experience: eating means devotion and is a sensory activity. “I enter into people through food,” she says, “and it’s completely voluntarily on their side.” Through food, we connect with others. It’s a process of dissolving boundaries between inside and outside, self and other, nature and culture.

Home Is a Foreign Place is a ‘Gesamtkunstwerk’, a total work of art that presents Knecht’s artistic practice in a multifaceted way, encouraging visitors to engage with both the foreign and the familiar within themselves.

About Sandra Knecht

In her artistic practice, Swiss artist Sandra Knecht (*1968 in Zurich, lives and works in Buus, Basel-Landschaft) explores the concept of home, delving into the unfamiliar aspects of the term. She traces her own family history and investigates the notion of home. Knecht’s long-term research unfolds through various media such as installation, archive, photography, video, sound, performance, and culinary art. Her multifaceted oeuvre is based on ten years of transdisciplinary research on the concept of home. In her work, the artist develops unique social sculptures, ranging from dinner parties and performance art to the conception and realization of artworks, exhibitions, and book projects.

Sandra Knecht received the Swiss Art Award in 2022 and was nominated for the Swiss Performance Award in 2017. That same year, she was part of the Salon Suisse at the Venice Biennale. Recent exhibitions include Landscapes of Desire at the 4th Industrial Art Biennial in Croatia (2023), as well as exhibitions at the Kunsthaus Zurich and Kunsthaus Baselland. In 2024, she completed a residency at Fundación Casa Wabi in Oaxaca, Mexico, and in 2023, a residency at Atelier Mondial in Berlin. Her work has been published in conjunction with the exhibition Paul Klee y los secretos de la naturaleza at the Fundació Joan Miró in Barcelona. Her monograph Sandra Knecht; Babel was published in 2021 by Christoph Merian Verlag, Basel. Her Cahier d’Artistes was released by Pro Helvetia (Edizioni Periferia Lucerne/Poschiavo) the same year.

About the Kulturstiftung Basel H. Geiger | KBH.G

The Kulturstiftung Basel H. Geiger | KBH.G was founded in 2019 by philanthropist Sibylle Geiger (1930–2020), who named the foundation after her grandfather, Swiss pharmacist and entrepreneur Hermann Geiger (1870–1962). The foundation’s mission is to provide a unique platform for art and culture to the city of Basel and its residents and visitors. All the foundation’s activities aim to add a new dimension to Basel’s already rich cultural offerings. The foundation plans to hold two to three independent art exhibitions each year, with free admission and catalogues.

Home Is a Foreign Place – Sandra Knecht

Kulturstiftung Basel H. Geiger | KBH.G

Spitaltrasse 18, 4056 Basel, Switzerland

January 10 to April 27, 2025

Open daily (except Tuesdays) from 11 am to 6 pm. Admission and publication are free