The Poverty Business. Art Is a Class Act!

Artists

Andy Hermann, Ariane Andereggen, Artemis Tsakiri, David Morrison, Katalin Branner, Kerim El-Mokdad, Kirila Faeh, KUNST BRAUCHT KOHLE (Chantal Romani & Jana Vanecek), La Bibliothèque des Ready-Mades*, Linus Scherer, Marc Elsener, Mitchell Anderson, Nicolle Bussien, Selina Zürrer, Stefanie Knobel, Stirnimann-Stojanovic, STUDIO FUMO, Teresa Sakura, TOMTOM

Press release

An exhibition that makes poverty and class visible. There is no poverty in Zurich; and Switzerland is a classless society – or so they say. Of course that is not true. If you want to see poverty in Zurich, stop by the Helmhaus on a cold night and you may well see a rough sleeper under the portico. Furthermore, upward mobility in our supposedly classless society is actually more difficult than in other countries. This is borne out by the statistics that the designer Vela Arbutina compiled for our exhibition graphics. How do artists tackle the theme of poverty? How do they cope with their own poverty? And how can artists make invisible class distinctions visible? This exhibition on a socio-political subject created on the initiative of guest curator Katalin Branner attempts to answer these and other questions by taking a closer look at past, present and future. It also examines what business has to do with poverty and shows that there has always been a poverty business – that is, people who make money out of society’s poor. Art is a class act when it comes to exposing such surprising connections.