Location: Switzerland
• Executive Master of Cultural & Gender Studies
Hochschule für Gestaltung und Kunst, Zürich, CH
• dipl. Kunsttherapeutin
Institut für Transpersonale Psychologie und Kunsttherapie, Bern, CH
• Diplom der freien Kunstklasse
Ecole Cantonale des Beaux-Arts, Sion, CH
Eliane Zinner studied Fine Arts at the Ecole cantonal des Beaux-Arts in Sion. For 5 years she studied the oil painting. The light in interior landscapes fascinated her. She was very touched by William Turner's gigantic landscape images. During this time, the first room installation was also created: the air bubble "The soul in my body", 1996. A 4 x 5 m air bubble breathes in a room. Further air bubbles are produced in the following years. It exposes the air bubble to the weather, leaves the air bubble pregnant in the hospital room.
She drew attention to the creative and psychological processes that a creative act shows. The curiosity of understanding these processes led her to study at the art therapy at the Institute for Transpersonal Psychology and Art Therapy in Berne. This gave rise to other important questions. How and with what do I identify? What is sick and what is healthy? What is culturally what is biological? To get closer to these answers, she studied Gender and Culture Studies at the Zurich University of the Arts in 2005.
www.elianezinner.ch
eliane.zinner@sunrise.ch
Description of the project: Headscarf
The ancient cultural heritage of the headscarf is varies and comples. Yet it is only a simple piece of fabric wrapped around the head of a person. The headscarf has been worn in a variety of ways since the beginning of human thought. It serves as protection, jewelry, status symbol. The term "headscarf" is today quickly linked to the headscarf of Muslim women. Associations such as oppression, Islamism and the resulting anxiety emerge. What is behind this piece of fabric?
In my headscarf pictures, the headscarf is torn out of its context. There are headscarves, in the absence of a head. The cloth, which surrounds the absent, becomes a sculpture, which gives the missing face a sort of outline. The observer's imagination seeks the face of the being to give it an identity. The headscarf and the associated religious, social and political connotations direct the search for the being. On the other hand, there is the detached beauty of the cloth, which, by virtue of its purity, strips off the proposed cultural connections and makes them superfluous.
The power attributed to the headscarf is questioned. It is not the headscarf that disturbs, but the stranger. It is not a question of what the headscarf is, but what reveals it about us, our prejudices, our fears.
Through the poetry of Eliane Zinner’s provocative works, she seeks to remove the viewer from their reality for a moment and asks them to queston their own identity politics by stimulating self-reflection.The work of the headscarf opens up various possibilities of identification in the viewer and brings one into contact with ones own depths.
100x100cm, Oil on canvas, 2015
100 x 100cm , Oil on canvas, 2015
100 x 100 cm, Oil on canvas, 2015
100 x 100 cm, Oil on canvas, 2016
100 x 100 cm, Oil on canvas, 2016
100 x 100 cm, Oil on canvas, 2015
100 x 100 cm, Oil on canvas, 2016
100 x 100 cm, Oil on canvas, 2016
“The light blue and red headscarf ”
100 x 100 cm, Oil on canvas, 2015
100 x 100 cm, Oil on canvas, 2016
100 x 100 cm, Oil on canvas, 2015
100 x 100 cm, Oil on canvas, 2016
Oil on canvas, 200x200cm, 2017
Oil on canvas, 200cm x 200cm, 2017
“The blue headscarf ”
“The yellow headscarf ”
“The grey headscarf ”
“The violet headscarf ”
“The brown headscarf ”
“The green headscarf ”
“The headscarf Wallis”
“The light blue headscarf ”
“The Burka”
“The red headscarf ”
“The pink headscarf”
“Der Tuareg”
“Maria”
